Results for ACCT

Financial accounting is the measurement of economic activity for decision-making. The objective of this course is not to train you to become an accountant but rather to help you develop into an informed user of financial statement information. Through cases, homework assignments, and classroom discussion, we will focus on understanding the mapping between underlying economic events and financial statements, and on understanding how this mapping affects inferences about future profitability and liquidity. The learning objectives are 1) Understanding accounting rules and terminology and how these are applied to construct financial statements, and 2) building an awareness of the judgment involved and the discretion allowed in choosing accounting methods, making estimates, and disclosing information in financial statements.

Financial accounting is the measurement of economic activity for decision-making. Financial statements are a key product of this measurement process and an important component of firms' financial reporting activities. The objective of this course is not to train you to become an accountant but rather to help you develop into an informed user of financial statement information. While financial statement users face a wide variety of decisions, they are often interested in understanding the implications of financial statement information for the future cash flows and earnings potential of a firm. We will focus on understanding the mapping between underlying economic events and financial statements, and on understanding how this mapping affects inferences about future profitability and liquidity. The following learning objectives will be emphasized: (1) familiarity with the transactions businesses engage in, (2) fluency in accounting terminology, (3) understanding the structure that maps transactions into accounting numbers, (4) understanding the rationale for various accounting methods, and (5) awareness of the judgment involved and the discretion allowed in choosing accounting methods, making estimates, and disclosing information in financial statements.

This course provides 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 to analyze the profitability of individual products and customers. The second part of the course will examine the role of internal accounting systems in evaluating the performance of individual business segments and divisions of the firm. Included in this part are topics related to the choice of internal pricing methods for transferring goods and services across divisions of the firm and the use of financial metrics for assessing the profitability of these divisions.

This course develops students' ability to read, understand and critically evaluate corporate financial statements. The course is oriented toward the user of financial accounting data (rather than the preparer) and it emphasizes the reconstruction and interpretation of economic events from published accounting reports. The course is geared toward students who already have had some exposure to basic financial accounting concepts, allowing for more depth and breadth of topic coverage and discussion in class.

A characteristic of business is the extensive use of accounting data. The financial accounting course has the general objective of developing students' understanding of the nature, scope, and limitations of accounting information. To achieve this objective the course attempts to: (1) develop students' understanding of the conceptual accounting framework, including the objectives of financial reporting, and (2) develop students' ability to understand and critically evaluate the financial disclosures made by corporations. An issue of particular interest will be the managerial incentive aspects of accounting information and disclosures.

Designing efficient compensation schemes is important for attracting, retaining, and motivating talent over time. Through cases, homework assignments, and classroom discussion, this course provides an overview of efficient compensation schemes across industries. We discuss the economic trade-offs (and best practices) behind the compensation schemes used to reward talent across industries, including CEOs, hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, consulting partners, entertainers, and professional athletes. The learning objectives are: (1) to understand the overall structure and individual components of compensation schemes and the incentive role that each component plays, (2) to discuss the pros and cons of alternative performance measurement systems and 3) to help you design an optimal compensation scheme based on the relevant economic environment. This course combines lectures and discussions with industry specialists.

This course is designed to enhance students' understanding of current financial reporting issues through a detailed analysis and comparison of U.S. GAAP and International Financial Reporting Standards. The course will cover the development of accounting standards, implementation of these standards, and how to interpret output from these standards. The course highlights intermediate and advanced financial reporting topics including fair value accounting, consolidation including variable interest entities, foreign currency translation, derivatives and hedging, leases, revenue recognition, pensions, and equity compensation. The course also focuses on evaluating emerging financial reporting issues such as proposed financial reporting standards put forth by U.S. or international standard setting bodies. This course should help students better understand the environment governing global financial reporting and how firms develop financial statement information within this environment.

This course is designed to develop students' ability to interpret and use financial accounting information across various economic decision contexts. The perspective taken is that of an outsider relying on publicly-available financial information for investment, credit, and strategic decision-making purposes. The course relies heavily upon financial statement analysis tools and the economic profit-based valuation framework. Through lectures, in-depth case studies, and real-time exercises, the first half of the course covers traditional financial statement analysis-based tools for critically analyzing and assessing a firm's current financial performance and economic condition, including ratio analysis, accounting quality analysis, and financial distress / bankruptcy prediction models. The second half of the course introduces an accounting-based valuation framework and develops the link between financial statement analysis, firm performance, and firm value. The capstone to the course is the completion of a comprehensive, real-time analysis and valuation of a publicly traded firm (or registered IPO candidate). The course is structured for students to gain a deeper understanding of the economic pressures behind the valuation creation and valuation process. The course will be useful to those students who anticipate making investment or credit decisions at least partially based on historical and prospective financial statement information, and those who want to have a better understanding of how to use financial information to assess whether and how any organization is creating value through its operations and strategic actions.

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.

This course provides a comprehensive overview of strategic, economic and financial issues related to mergers and acquisitions. Specifically, we review the market for corporate control, discuss strategic issues related to firms' decision to acquire or be acquired, and examine the M&A regulatory environment. We analyze various valuation and deal structure considerations, identify strategies that underlay a successful negotiation, and review the financial reporting and income tax implications of M&A transactions.In covering these and other related issues, we will discuss both the theory and practice of mergers and acquisitions. To provide some specific context we will analyze many large and small M&A deals. In discussing these cases, we will examine the situation faced by the company, the issues surrounding the transaction, including the financial implications, and focus on the managerial incentives and the judgment applied. Class time comprises mini lectures that introduce some of the more technical concepts, case discussions, and guest speakers who will offer additional perspectives on the subject matters.The course is co-taught by Ron Kasznik (GSB) and Safra Catz (Oracle Corporation). Ms. Catz is the CEO of Oracle Corporation and a member of its Board of Directors. She has led Oracle through more than 100 acquisitions in recent years (including PeopleSoft, Siebel, BEA, Sun Microsystems, and many more). Prior to joining Oracle in 1999, Ms. Catz was Managing Director at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, a global investment bank (now part of CSFB). Ms. Catz also serves on the board of directors for Walt Disney.

This is an advanced elective course on the economics of active investing in public equity markets. We will cover a set of foundational skills needed to select, and manage, a portfolio of public stocks. Specifically, the course material is designed to improve student skills in: (1) assessing the relative attractiveness of individual companies, (2) building stock screens to filter and rank firms based on user-specified parameters, (3) buying and shorting individual equity positions, and (4) monitoring and managing portfolio risk. This is a hands-on course with an emphasis on experiential learning. Students will make extensive use of the analytical tools. Some of the classes will be held in the "Real-time Analytics and Investment Lab" (R.A.I.L.) facility in the Bass Center. There is no final exam. However, there will be a number of individual cases and a final group project. 25% of the grade will be based on class participation, and 75% will be based on cases and projects. Because it is an advanced elective, students taking this class are expected to be well versed in core economic, accounting, and finance skills. Material covered in a second Financial Modeling course, as well as in Accounting 312 (Evaluating Financial Statement Information) and Accounting 313 (Accounting-based Valuation) will come in handy. However, none of these courses are required.

This course examines the unique institutional, governance, and transparency issues affecting corporate valuations in emerging markets. Through lectures, case discussions and the students' real-time analysis of an emerging market firm, this condensed course is structured for students to gain a deeper understanding of the economic pressures behind the value creation, value destruction, and valuation process in emerging economies. The course focuses on critically interpreting financial and non-financial information for purposes of assessing firm fundamentals and corporate governance risk in the presence of weak legal systems, strong political forces, limited investor protections, limited market development, strong macro-economic forces, opacity and resultant business arrangements. The course is beneficial for investors, consultants, managers, and entrepreneurs operating in or considering expansion to developing markets.

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 contexts with a focus on three types of situations: public for-profit companies, early-stage private companies, and not-for-profit companies of different sizes.

Taxes have a direct impact on cash flow and often divert 20% to 40% of the firm's pretax cash flow to the government, making the government one of the largest stakeholders. Taxes also affect a wide variety of business decisions, including the efficient formation of businesses, operational planning across jurisdictions with competing tax regimes, M&A tax structure, the creation of cash and equity compensation plans, and retirement planning (to name a few). This course first provides a conceptual framework for incorporating taxation into business decisions, linking concepts from accounting, corporate finance, business law, and economics. The course then provides real-world examples to illustrate the impact of tax considerations on earnings and cash flows. The goal of this course is to provide a foundational understanding of tax consequences and trade-offs that can be adapted across jurisdictions and as tax laws change.

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 firms management. The main topics covered in this course include: 1. Profitability Measurement and Accrual Accounting. 2. Performance Evaluation and Managerial Incentives. 3. Accounting-based Equity Valuation. 4. The Informational Role of Accounting Numbers 5. Earnings Quality Constructs and Measures. 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.

Empirical Research on Corporate Reporting: This doctoral-level course covers research on the role of financial and non-financial 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 the informational role of financial reports, accounting measurement attributes, earnings management, earnings quality, environmental, social, and governance-related disclosures and the role of key actors in the reporting environment, including management, investors, auditors, analysts and regulators. The course is interdisciplinary in nature. The readings focus on research design, and key theories, themes and approaches from the accounting, finance, economics, and psychology literature. Our overall goal is develop your understanding of existing research and its strengths and limitations, and to identify new research opportunities.

This course provides a broad overview of the economic theories of corporate disclosure, with a focus on the effects that these disclosures have on financial markets. The range of topics we will study includes: voluntary disclosure, earnings management, cheap talk, reputation games, and disclosure's impact on trade, investor welfare, and asset prices.

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 financial reporting. 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.

This course examines selected topics in accounting research. The course features three 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.

This course develops tools from information economics to study the strategic interactions between different agents inside a firm. Common to these studies is that agents acquire private information that is valuable to other parties. The range of applications includes: centralization vs delegation, static and dynamic contracting under moral hazard, Bayesian persuasion, and the optimal design of monitoring/auditing mechanisms.

The informational efficiency of stock markets has been a central theme in financial economic research in the past 50 years. Over this period, the focus of academic research has gradually shifted from the general to the more specific. While earlier studies tend to view the matter as a yes/no debate, most recent studies acknowledge the impossibility of fully efficient markets, and focus instead on analyses of factors that materially affect the timely incorporation of information into prices. At the same time, increasing attention is being paid to regulatory and market design issues that either impede or enhance market pricing efficiency.nIn this course, we will cover recent research on the role of informational arbitrage in asset pricing. Our starting point is the observation that, with costly information, equilibrium prices will invariably reflect some mispricing. The existence of mispricing introduces a role for informational arbitrage, whereby some traders will invest resources to become informed about the mispricing, with hopes of profiting from it. We review recent academic evidence on this process, and reflect on its implications for future market-related research. We will also discuss how academic research might help lower information/arbitrage costs.nThis is a doctoral level course. Our goal is not only to review existing research, but also to stimulate new work in the area. As such, I expect it will be of primary interest to Ph.D. students majoring in accounting, finance, and economics. Given our focus on returns prediction and the role of information in arbitrage strategies, this course should be of particular interest to those interested exploring the relation between information flows and market pricing dynamics. nThe course content is interdisciplinary in nature, spanning finance, economics, and accounting. Most of the readings in the earlier readings derive from finance and economics (market efficiency, limits to arbitrage, and behavioral finance); most of the later readings derive from financial accounting (equity valuation, fundamental analysis, earnings management, and analyst behavior).

This course is offered for students requiring specialized training in an area not covered by existing courses. To register, a student must obtain permission from the faculty member who is willing to supervise the reading.

This course is elected as soon as a student is ready to begin research for the dissertation, usually shortly after admission to candidacy. To register, a student must obtain permission from the faculty member who is willing to supervise the research.

Doctoral Practicum in Teaching

Doctoral Practicum in Research