Open Access

Jerome Geyer-Klingeberg

• The volume of empirical research in finance exhibits a strong upward trajectory. On the one hand, the large number of research publications often produces contradictory results for the same phenomenon under examination. On the other hand, a credibility crisis calls into question the reliability of empirical research findings and the transparency of the academic research process that produces the results. Consequently, there is a need to objectively reflect and consolidate previous empirical research results and to correct biases that affect the validity of scientific evidence. Meta-analysis is a research approach that comes with this capability. Meta-analysis is a secondary research method used to synthesize existing empirical results, to detect and explain consistencies and inconsistencies among research findings, and to identify and filter out distorting effects related to publication selection and model misspecification. Although meta-analysis is a standard tool for researchThe volume of empirical research in finance exhibits a strong upward trajectory. On the one hand, the large number of research publications often produces contradictory results for the same phenomenon under examination. On the other hand, a credibility crisis calls into question the reliability of empirical research findings and the transparency of the academic research process that produces the results. Consequently, there is a need to objectively reflect and consolidate previous empirical research results and to correct biases that affect the validity of scientific evidence. Meta-analysis is a research approach that comes with this capability. Meta-analysis is a secondary research method used to synthesize existing empirical results, to detect and explain consistencies and inconsistencies among research findings, and to identify and filter out distorting effects related to publication selection and model misspecification. Although meta-analysis is a standard tool for research synthesis and evidence-based decision-making in many related research disciplines such as economics and management science, it has rarely been applied in finance. The aim of this thesis is to structurally introduce meta-analysis in finance as a complement to primary research and traditional narrative reviews by providing an objective and statistical approach to the accumulation of scientific knowledge. Chapter 2 provides a comprehensive overview of the opportunities that meta-analysis offers for finance research, recent applications of meta-analysis in finance, and the challenges and limitations associated with it. Chapter 3 presents an applied meta-analysis of 1,016 empirical effects obtained from 71 previous studies that estimate the impact of corporate financial hedging on firm value. In Chapter 4, a Monte Carlo simulation is conducted to compare the statistical properties of common weighting schemes in meta-regression analysis under the practical condition that multiple and dependent estimates are reported in the same study, which is the norm in finance. By introducing, applying, and further advancing meta-analysis in the context of finance research, this thesis aims to increase the awareness and acceptance of meta-analysis as well as to promote its future application in the field.…