Chapter 11: Mapping the Field. A Text Analysis of Money Laundering Research Publications

Purpose: This chapter aims to perform text analysis to investigate the academic area delimitated by economic and financial performance and money laundering.

Need for the study: The findings contribute to the body of literature by providing important insights in terms of money laundering and financial performance.

Methodology: In order to achieve the research objective, further than 640 papers were retrieved from the Web of Science from 1994 to 2022, concentrating on the most referenced documents found in the superior quartile.

Findings: The empirical findings emphasise that the article with the unique words Fraud Detection System: A Survey by Abdallah A., Maarof M. A., and Zainal A., examines a complete and systematic assessment of the concerns and obstacles that impede the performance of fraud detection systems. Furthermore, topic modelling findings highlighted the presence of four main topics: topic 1 – identified by ‘performance’, ‘firms’, ‘financial’, ‘fraud’, and ‘board’; topic 2 – described in terms of ‘fraud’, ‘accounting’, ‘evidence’, ‘audit’, and ‘research’; topic 3 – identified by ‘firms’, ‘fraud’, ‘financial’, ‘CEO’, and ‘results’ while topic 4 – identified through ‘fraud’, ‘detection’, ‘data’, ‘cost’, and ‘card’.

Practical implications: This study will act as a guide for researchers of the financial performance field to explore the scientific publications in the field of money laudering.