Board Governance

This course is focused on helping students understand the role boards and board members play in corporate governance and the lives of businesses large and small.  This case-driven course is designed to help students who plan to serve on boards as private-equity or venture investors, entrepreneurs who will need to assemble and manage boards, and executives who realize they will need to interact with and answer to boards.  The course is designed to help students understand the issues boards face — both routine and non-routine — through the eyes of the board member.   By understanding the roles and responsibilities of board members and the mechanisms though which they exercise these duties, students will come away with an understanding of how boards function effectively (and in too many cases fail to function effectively).  The course will include examining boards in a variety of corporate contexts including: public and private, large and small, for-profit and not-for profit. 

Management Accounting

This core course will begin with an introduction to the concepts and tools of managerial accounting. The first part of the course covers alternative costing methods and illustrates how the resulting cost information can be used for decision making. This part of the course will examine cost and profitability concepts, cost allocation, transfer pricing, activity based costing, and customer profitability analysis. The second part of the course will examine the choice of financial and non-financial performance measures for evaluating business strategies and business unit success. This part of the course will cover the use of economic measures of performance, balanced scorecard approaches, and methods to develop explicit business models. The final part of the course will examine executive compensation and topics such as compensation arrangements used for senior and division manager remuneration, measurement of total compensation, valuation of stock options, and the impact of compensation choices on managerial behavior and firm performance.

Managerial Accounting: Performance Measurement and Executive Compensation

This core course provides a comprehensive introduction to the concepts and tools of managerial accounting. The first part of the course demonstrates how management can rely on internal accounting information to measure and manage the profitability of individual products and customers. As part of that analysis, we examine alternative costing methods and illustrate how the resulting cost information can be used for decision making.

The second part of the course focuses on the role of the internal accounting system in evaluating managerial performance and in coordinating the activities among business units within the firm. Our focus here will be on performance metrics that enable effective decentralization by aligning the objectives of individual business units with the overall corporate goals.

Valuation in Emerging Markets

The course is designed to introduce students to the corporate governance and transparency issues faced by managers and investors in emerging economies, and the impact these problems have on firm valuation and capital market behavior. The goal of the class is to develop a framework for forecasting future earnings, cash flows and dividends and, ultimately, estimating firm value. The first half of the course will discuss the impact that weak legal, political and regulatory institutions have on financial reporting practices, corporate governance and capital market behavior, and develop an understanding of the incentives and institutional arrangements that exacerbate or mitigate these effects. The second half of the course will address the following question: how does an investor value an investment opportunity in an economy with weak institutions, such as poor corporate transparency, minimal protection of investor rights, a self-serving government and/or legal systems that fail to enforce contracts? The course will focus on understanding the risks, uncertainties and limitations investors face in each of these settings, and outlining the type of adjustments that should be made to firm valuations and underlying earnings, cash flow and dividend forecasts. Evidence from recent research on these topics will be presented and discussed throughout the course. The capstone to the class will be a final project. The final project will focus on the analysis of a specific emerging economy's capital market and institutional environment, conducted in the context of determining the investment potential (as a minority shareholder) of a publicly-traded firm in that market.

• ACCT 317

Managerial Accounting: Performance Measurement, Compensation, and Governance
Video: ACCT 317 - David F. Larcker BBL

The course will examine the academic and professional controversies surrounding corporate governance and executive compensation. A basic framework will be developed to integrate the many important dimensions of corporate governance in the U.S. and international settings. The institutional features of corporate governance and executive compensation will be documented using the professional business and legal literatures. In addition, the scientific research in accounting, economics, finance, and organizational behavior will be used to provide insights into the measurement and consequences of observed corporate governance and executive compensation choices. After successfully finishing the course, a student should be able to (i) understand the debates about appropriate choices for corporate governance and executive compensation and (ii) critically evaluate the implications of academic and professional research studies on these controversial issues.

• ACCT 332

Mergers and Acquisitions: Accounting, Regulatory, and Governance Issues

This course covers accounting and economic issues related to mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures. In particular, we examine the financial reporting implications of corporate control changes (e.g., consolidation, the "purchase" and "acquisition" treatments, in-process-R&D), and the income tax implications of M&A transactions (e.g., taxable vs. non-taxable, "asset" vs. "stock", etc). We also examine corporate governance issues related to firms? decision to acquire or be acquired, the M&A regulatory environment (e.g., securities regulation, anti-trust), and other factors that potentially shape the structure of M&A transactions.