Latest Blogs

Professor Steve Zeff’s digital library

Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business is pleased to share Professor Steve Zeff’s digital library with the EAA community: https://business.rice.edu/stephen-zeff-digital-library. This open digital library was created by the Jones School as a permanent repository for Steve’s contributions to our understanding of the historical evolution of financial reporting standards and regulations in the U.S. and globally. The website includes several short video clips and two of Steve’s related publications. In the first video series, Steve…
BAHA DIYAROV
BAHA DIYAROV
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New version: Introductory Guide to Using Stata in Empirical Financial Accounting Research

A new version of my Stata guide is now available and freely accessible via Github (including code and data examples). Please see https://github.com/dveenman/stataguide or here to go directly to the pdf. The objective of this guide is to assist BSc/MSc students, PhD students, and junior researchers in using Stata for empirical archival research. Stata is a powerful program that can be used to analyze many different research questions in the fields of accounting, finance, economics,…
DAVID VEENMAN
DAVID VEENMAN
2 min read
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One ESG metric is like squaring a circle

It appears to be extremely hard to produce  a meaningful ESG score. Standard and Poor’s recently decided that it will no longer rank companies’ environmental, social and governance risks from 1 to 5 . This decision can be understood in the light of how aggregate ESG scores are constructed as  discussed in a recent FT publication: “Companies with good ESG scores pollute as much as low-rated rivals.” This article made it clear that the current…
Jan Bouwens
Jan Bouwens
4 min read
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The lease standard has changed, and firms’ transition disclosures confuse more than they clarify

In a paper recently published in the European Accounting Review, we study the text of the transition disclosures in firms’ financial statements explaining the likely effects of a new standard. For a sample of almost all affected firms, we extract the text that refers to how firms plan to transition to the new lease standard. The text runs from a couple of dozen to sometimes over 500 words per disclosure. We then quantify this text…
ARC Commitee
ARC Commitee
3 min read
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How often and how much information should publicly listed firms report?

Disclosure regulation is pervasive and has been increasing in developed economies, despite regulators&#8217; difficulty determining the socially optimal level of disclosure. Showcasing this difficulty, regulators have struggled to reach a consensus on the frequency and content of interim reporting for decades. For example, the European Union (EU) introduced mandatory quarterly reports in 2004, only to abolish the mandate in 2013, returning to a semi-annual reporting frequency for firms whose securities are trading on a regulated…
ARC Commitee
ARC Commitee
3 min read
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605

Compensation Shifting from Salary to Dividends

This study focuses on the strategic behavior of owner-managers in relation to their compensation and its impact on reported earnings. We investigate whether owner-managers of smaller firms manipulate their compensation, specifically by decreasing their salaries and increasing dividends, to meet or beat the zero earnings benchmark. We emphasize that owner-managers have significant compensation discretion, enabling them to choose between salary (which decreases earnings) and dividends (which does not decrease earnings). We conduct our analysis using…
ARC Commitee
ARC Commitee
2 min read
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412

Red flags in research as a means to overcome group think

Red flags in research as a means to overcome group think &nbsp; How independent tests can help to overcome group think so as to enhance fraud detection. In his classic experiment in 1955, Solomon Asch showed that as soon as one person paints an incorrect picture, this picture is confirmed by a non-trivial number of others. In his research Asch shows four lines: the test line and lines 1, 2 and 3. Participants in his…
Jan Bouwens
Jan Bouwens
5 min read
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Why not use a funny game to start your next class?

&nbsp; It was great having Patricia Everaert hosting a fantastic hands-on Classroom session during the EAA Annual Congress at Espoo, Helsinki. &nbsp; We left the room with several ideas and readily-available tools to use in our accounting courses, that will certainly make learning more engaging, novel, surprising and exciting! &nbsp; More specifically, to have a look at the DUGA tool, you can go to www.duga.castars.net and register.  Add the code 590de1 and you can start playing…
Anastasia Kopita
Anastasia Kopita
< 1 min read
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515

Innovative Data – Use-cases in management accounting research and practice

With recent advances in technology, the amount of data available for academics and practitioners to analyze has grown exponentially. However, at this stage, the potential of this data to assist managers in improving decision-making and managerial control has not been fully realized. &nbsp; The editorial In their editorial for the European Accounting Review special issue on innovative data sources in management accounting research, Matthias Mahlendorf, Melissa Martin, and David Smith present a series of ‘use-cases’…
ARC Commitee
ARC Commitee
2 min read
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