PhD Accounting Courses
ACCT 609. Financial Reporting and Management Control
The course is aimed at first-year doctoral students in accounting and neighboring fields such as economics, finance, and operations management. It provides a relatively non-technical introduction to issues related to internal organization of firms and the role of accounting information in coordinating and motivating the decisions of managers. The primary objective of the course is to expose students to the main questions in this area and to survey the current state of the art by reading theoretical and empirical work and examining cases. The course will also touch briefly to lay the groundwork for ACCT 611 on formal models of contracting, agency, and mechanism design.
ACCT 610. Seminar in Accounting Research
This doctoral-level course covers recent research on the role of informational arbitrage in asset pricing. The organizing theme is the informational efficiency of markets. Since the mid-1960s, the dominant academic view is that security prices are almost entirely rational or efficiently set. In recent years, this view has been challenged along several dimensions. We review this evidence and reflect on its implications for future research. The course is interdisciplinary in nature. Most of the readings in the first half derive from finance and economics (market efficiency, limits to arbitrage, and behavioral finance); most of the readings in the second half derive from the accounting literature (equity valuation, earnings management, and analyst behavior). Our overall goal is not only to review existing research, but also to stimulate new work in this area.
ACCT 611. Applications of Information Economics in Management and Accounting
This course examines a range of modeling paradigms that are becoming increasingly accepted in management and accounting. Common to these models is that they employ methods from information economics including screening, incomplete contracting, signaling and voluntary disclosure. The methodological tools reviewed 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.
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. Not offered in 2008-09.
