Financial Accounting Standards Research Initiative

In a paper just posted on SSRN, Cornell PhD student Young-Jun Cho and I assess the performance of a stock market called SLCapex.  From the abstract: SLCapex is a stock exchange owned and operated by “residents” of the online virtual world Second Life. Despite its almost complete lack of regulation and legal protections against fraud or [...] Read more > >

I recently read a paper in The Accounting Review (Vol 85, No. 2) titled “Correcting for Cross-Sectional and Time-Series Dependence in Accounting Research” by Ian Gow, Gaizka Ormazabal, and Daniel Taylor. The paper deals with how to adjust for clustering across two dimensions (normally firm and year). After reading the paper I was was curious how [...] Read more > >

Just this morning, a team of researchers went live with a website that ranks accounting programs’ research by topic and methodology. If you’ve ever wondered which accounting programs are the strongest in analytical methodology, based on published research in the past 6, 12, or 20 years by faculty currently in the program, this site can [...] Read more > >

The paradoxical title of this post is quoted from this article in Science News about the inconsistent and often inappropriate use of statistics in academic research.  I would strongly recommend every accounting researcher read the article, make sure they understand the criticisms, and then promptly ignore most of them. The article emphasizes that statistical significance is [...] Read more > >

Stephen Ryan (NYU) joins FASRI to talk about his recent research on the fair value option in the banking industry.  Stephen is one of the most respected accounting academics studying banking and financial instruments these days, so I expect people will have plenty of questions beyond the research study that will form the heart of [...] Read more > >

As posted here, FASRI is issuing a call for research consultants to conduct revenue recognition studies.  This call is a little different from the usual 'call for proposals' because applicants must be willing to work closely with FASRI and FASB staff to identify research topics that will be most helpful in staff and Board deliberations.   [...] Read more > >

The Financial Accounting Standards Research Initiative (FASRI) is issuing an open call for academic researchers to serve as Research Consultants for a Revenue Recognition Research Project.  Research consultants will work with members of FASRI to develop rigorous research studies likely to be helpful with the FASB and IASB deliberations on revenue recognition and related topics.  [...] Read more > >

You are probably aware that someone has (apparently illegally) published email correspondence involving climate scientists at the University of East Anglia.  This prompts me to think of writing two posts.  Later on, if I get the courage, I will write a post about how we deal with messy data — the emails discussing the matter [...] Read more > >

You may know Columbia Business School Professor Stephen Penman as the 14th-most downloaded author on SSRN.  Or you might know him as a Director of the Center for Excellence in Accounting and Security Analysis. Or perhaps as author of Financial Statement Analysis and Security Valuation. More recently, Stephen has been visible as a critic of the [...] Read more > >

We had a great discussion about Reg FD and foreign filers on Tuesday.  If you were not able to attend, I encourage you to view the archive.  When you do so, you will notice several text comments from me (Accounting Footman) that may at first seem very critical of the study.  I want to clarify [...] Read more > >