PhD Accounting Courses
ACCT 609. Financial Reporting and Management Control
This course is aimed at doctoral students in accounting and neighboring fields including economics, finance, political economics and operations management. The course seeks to provide an introduction to the role of accounting information in (i) measuring firm performance, (ii) projecting profitability and firm value for external constituents, (iii) and motivating and controlling the firm's management.
The main topics covered in this course include:
1. Accrual Accounting and Profitability Measurement
2. Accounting-based Equity Valuation
3. Accounting Conservatism
4. Performance Evaluation and Managerial Incentives
The primary objective of the course is to introduce students to current research paradigms on these topics and to identify promising avenues for future research. The course readings include recent theoretical and empirical papers.
ACCT 610. Seminar in Empirical Accounting Research
Empirical Research on Financial Reporting: This doctoral-level course covers research on the role of accounting information in capital markets. The focus is on introducing students to key themes in empirical accounting and capital markets research, and to key research designs applied to examine information-related questions. Course topics include market efficiency, limits to arbitrage, the role of accounting in providing information to investors, anomalies, alternative sources of information, bankruptcy prediction, accounting measurement attributes, earnings management, earnings quality, and the role of accounting information in managers' investment decisions.
The course is interdisciplinary in nature. The readings focus on research design, and key theories, themes and approaches from the finance, economics and accounting literature. Our overall goal is not only to review existing research, but also to identify new research opportunities.
ACCT 611. Applications of Information Economics in Management and Accounting
This course examines a range of modeling paradigms that are used in several management disciplines including accounting, finance and operations management. Common to these models is that they employ methods from information economics including screening, incomplete contracting, signaling and voluntary disclosure. The methodological tools introduced in this course are then applied to a variety of topics including capital budgeting, internal pricing, supplier relations, financial reporting, earnings management and financial analysts.
ACCT 612. Accounting Seminar
The purpose of this PhD seminar is to facilitate your conception and execution of substantive individual research in financial reporting. It provides a vehicle for supplementing and integrating your knowledge of basic research tools and methods, as well as an exposure to the dimensions of contemporary research in the field of accounting. The focus of the research we will discuss in this seminar is on global financial reporting. Such research encompasses studies dealing with contemporary financial reporting issues as well as research addressing issues relating to the globalization of financial reporting. Because these issues are also of concern to financial reporting standard setters, we will discuss whether and how the research we study informs standard setting debates. Prerequisite: Consent of the instructor.
ACCT 615. Selected Topics in Empirical Accounting Research
This course examines selected topics in accounting research. The course features four faculty who will each give a focused look at a given area, introduce students to important questions in that area, key papers in the related literature, and critical aspects of the research designs applied in the area. The aim is to increase student's familiarity with empirical accounting research, their ability to critically evaluate research and research designs, and to prepare students to conduct independent research.
ACCT 617. Managerial Incentives and Corporate Governance: Concepts and Empirical Methodology
The course will consist of three set of topics. The first part of the class will examine a set of applied econometric topics that are useful in empirical accounting research. Each of these topics will be illustrated using contemporary examples from accounting, economics, and finance. The second part of the class will cover some of the basic theoretical work in moral hazard agency models and various extensions to this type of research. The final part of the course will discuss the empirical literature on corporate governance and executive compensation. The course will be taught in a seminar style and students will be required to develop a series of research projects on the topics covered in the class.