Aiyesha Dey

Overview

Professor Dey’s research explores governance and agency conflicts, board structure, governance regulation and corporate behavior, ownership structure, and the relation between executives’ characteristics and corporate behavior. In analyzing corporate governance mechanisms, she seeks to answer the broad questions, “Do the mechanisms serve to narrow the gap between managers’ and shareholders’ interests, and if so, how? Do they have a significant impact on firm performance and/or value? Should the mechanisms in a firm be regulated?” Her recent research incorporates behavioral economics into individual decision making in the corporate setting. Her studies revolve around understanding and measuring fundamental traits of individual executives and examining how and why aspects of executives’ character influence corporate governance and organizational outcomes. Her findings show that corporate governance boils down to personal governance: “who” leads the firm will ultimately decide the structure, strength, and integrity of the control system in place, and Professor Dey believes that this is the path that corporate governance research should take. Understanding various informal interpersonal dynamics among top management teams, such as trust and friendships, and how they influence the establishment of more formal institutional systems in corporations and decision making at the top levels of management, is one of Professor Dey’s several related research streams.

Overview

Financial Reporting and Control
Throughout their careers, business leaders are required to measure and evaluate their organization's economic performance, improve resource allocation and strategy implementation within their organizations, and build accountability for performance through effective external and internal governance. Top leadership in most organizations must also communicate performance information to external investors and other capital providers to ensure that their organizations are able to access capital on favorable terms. This course provides students with key concepts and frameworks that guide the effective design and use of performance measurement systems to accomplish these multiple complex goals.

Winner of the 2022 Distinguished Contributions to Accounting Literature Award from the American Accounting Association (AAA) for “Real and Accrual-Based Earnings Management in the Pre- and Post-Sarbanes-Oxley Periods” (The Accounting Review, May 2008) with Daniel A. Cohen and Thomas Z. Lys.

Winner of the Best Discussant Award at the 2020 Review of Accounting Studies Conference.

Recipient of the 2013 Accounting Research Center Grant from the University of Minnesota.

Recipient of the 2012 Dean's Small Research Grant from the University of Minnesota.

Recipient of the 2012 Initiative on Global Markets Research Grant from the University of Chicago.

Recipient of the 2012 Institute for Fraud Prevention Research Grant.

Recipient of the 2012 Center for Financial Markets and Policy Grant.

Recipient of the 2011 Fama-Miller Center for Research in Finance Grant from the University of Chicago.

Winner of the 2011 Accounting Research Center Award from the University of Chicago.

Recipient of the Accounting Research Center Award from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, 2004–2005.

Recipient of the Zell Center for Risk Research Award from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, 2003–2005.

Named a Fellow of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, 2000-2005.

Winner of the 1996 National Scholar Award from the government of India.

Named a Fellow of the American Accounting Association Doctoral Consortium, 2003.