---
title: "Portfolio optimization research: papers and trends"
description: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “portfolio optimization” appeared in 1,487 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in finance (518), operations research (433) and economics (302)."
url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/portfolio-optimization
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/portfolio-optimization.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “portfolio optimization” appeared in 1,487 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in finance (518), operations research (433) and economics (302). (as of 2026-11-03)"
data_url: https://scholar4ai.com/data/rankings.json
updated: 2026-11-03T18:03:37+09:00
window: 2026-10-05 to 2026-11-03
source: OpenAlex (CC0)
---

# Papers on “portfolio optimization”

Research on “portfolio optimization” in the 480 tracked journals: papers per year and category, the journals, institutions and countries publishing it, the keywords studied with it and its most-cited papers. It is not among the most frequent keywords of the last 30 days, so this page has no list of its latest papers.

Back to the ranking: https://scholar4ai.com/rankings/keywords.md

## Key findings

- From 2017 to 2026 (so far), the keyword “portfolio optimization” appeared in 1,487 papers in the tracked journals, most of them in finance (518), operations research (433) and economics (302).
- 194 of them were published in 2025, against 143 in 2017.
- Since 2023, the institutions with the most of these papers were Technical University of Munich (11), Western University (10) and Charles University (9).
- The journals publishing most of them were Annals of Operations Research (67), Finance research letters (46) and Computational Economics (45).
- The most-cited of them is “Responsible Investing: The ESG-Efficient Frontier” (Journal of Financial Economics, 2019), with 2,101 citations.

## Papers per year

*Papers per publication year and category*

| Category | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 (so far) |
|---|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|---:|
| [Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/finance.md) | 46 | 33 | 43 | 41 | 65 | 47 | 54 | 58 | 73 | 58 |
| [Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/operations-research.md) | 44 | 39 | 31 | 41 | 42 | 44 | 37 | 56 | 48 | 51 |
| [Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/economics.md) | 29 | 24 | 27 | 27 | 24 | 31 | 36 | 39 | 43 | 22 |
| [AI](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/ai.md) | 16 | 11 | 10 | 13 | 22 | 26 | 22 | 16 | 26 | 14 |
| [Statistics](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/statistics.md) | 6 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| [Management](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/management.md) | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| [Information Systems](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/information-systems.md) | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| [Accounting](https://scholar4ai.com/categories/accounting.md) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| All categories | 143 | 115 | 116 | 128 | 156 | 152 | 157 | 175 | 194 | 151 |

## Where the papers come from

*Journals with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Journal | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Annals of Operations Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/annals-of-operations-research.md) | 67 |
| 2 | [Finance research letters](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/finance-research-letters.md) | 46 |
| 3 | [Computational Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/computational-economics.md) | 45 |
| 4 | [Expert Systems with Applications](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/expert-systems-with-applications.md) | 35 |
| 5 | [European Journal of Operational Research](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/european-journal-of-operational-research.md) | 28 |
| 6 | [International Review of Economics & Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-review-of-economics-finance.md) | 17 |
| 7 | [International Review of Financial Analysis](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/international-review-of-financial-analysis.md) | 16 |
| 8 | [The North American Journal of Economics and Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/the-north-american-journal-of-economics-and-finance.md) | 16 |
| 9 | [Research in International Business and Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/research-in-international-business-and-finance.md) | 12 |
| 10 | [Financial Innovation](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/financial-innovation.md) | 12 |

*Institutions with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Institution | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | [Technical University of Munich](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/technical-university-of-munich.md) | 11 |
| 2 | [Western University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/western-university.md) | 10 |
| 3 | Charles University | 9 |
| 4 | [Sapienza University of Rome](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/sapienza-university-of-rome.md) | 9 |
| 5 | [Southwestern University of Finance and Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/southwestern-university-of-finance-and-economics.md) | 9 |
| 6 | University of Bergamo | 8 |
| 7 | VSB - Technical University of Ostrava | 8 |
| 8 | [Lebanese American University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/lebanese-american-university.md) | 7 |
| 9 | Paris School of Business | 7 |
| 10 | [Hunan University](https://scholar4ai.com/institutions/hunan-university.md) | 6 |

*Countries with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Country | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | China | 172 |
| 2 | United States | 98 |
| 3 | Italy | 62 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 56 |
| 5 | India | 45 |
| 6 | Germany | 42 |
| 7 | France | 40 |
| 8 | Canada | 37 |
| 9 | South Korea | 28 |
| 10 | Czechia | 24 |

*Keywords with the most papers, since 2023*

| # | Keyword | Papers |
|---:|---|---:|
| 1 | Sharpe ratio | 55 |
| 2 | conditional value at risk | 50 |
| 3 | out-of-sample performance | 49 |
| 4 | asset allocation | 40 |
| 5 | [COVID-19 pandemic](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/covid-19-pandemic.md) | 34 |
| 6 | [transaction costs](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/transaction-costs.md) | 32 |
| 7 | [risk management](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/risk-management.md) | 30 |
| 8 | mean-variance optimization | 28 |
| 9 | [portfolio diversification](https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/portfolio-diversification.md) | 26 |

## Most-cited papers

*Most-cited papers since 2017*

| # | Citations | Per month | Title | Journal | Published | Authors |
|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2,101 | 22.3 | [Responsible Investing: The ESG-Efficient Frontier](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2020.11.001) | [Journal of Financial Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-financial-economics.md) | 2019-01-01 | Lasse Heje Pedersen, Shaun Fitzgibbons, Łukasz Pomorski |
| 2 | 1,353 | 22.0 | [Sustainable investing with ESG rating uncertainty](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2021.09.009) | [Journal of Financial Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-financial-economics.md) | 2021-09-17 | Doron Avramov, Si Cheng, Abraham Lioui et al. |
| 3 | 691 | 6.7 | [Time varying risk aversion](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2018.02.007) | [Journal of Financial Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-financial-economics.md) | 2018-03-19 | Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza, Luigi Zingales |
| 4 | 384 | 3.6 | [Conditional Tail-Risk in Cryptocurrency Markets](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jempfin.2018.11.002) | [Journal of Empirical Finance](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/journal-of-empirical-finance.md) | 2018-01-01 | Nicola Borri |
| 5 | 353 | 4.3 | [Blind to carbon risk? An analysis of stock market reaction to the Paris Agreement](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.106571) | [Ecological Economics](https://scholar4ai.com/journals/ecological-economics.md) | 2020-01-15 | Irene Monasterolo, Luca De Angelis |

## Research ideas that follow this keyword

- [Deep reinforcement learning for portfolios, replicated](https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/deep-rl-for-portfolios-reproducibility.md)

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Papers on “portfolio optimization”. Journal and Conference Research Rankings. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/portfolio-optimization

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-keywords-portfolio-optimization,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Papers on “portfolio optimization”},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/keywords/portfolio-optimization}},
  urldate = {2026-11-03},
  note = {Journal and Conference Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).