Publications

May 2009
Article

Asymmetric Information Effects on Loan Spreads

By: Victoria Ivashina

The paper estimates the cost arising from information asymmetry between the lead bank and members of the lending syndicate. In a lending syndicate, the lead bank retains only a fraction of the loan but acts as the intermediary between the borrower and the syndicate... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Banks and Banking; Financing and Loans; Interest Rates; Capital; Investment Portfolio; Credit; Diversification; Risk and Uncertainty

SSRN

12 May 2021
Working Paper Summaries

Accounting for Product Impact in the Water Utilities Industry

Keywords: by George Serafeim and Katie Trinh

2021
Working Paper

Accounting for Product Impact in the Interactive Media and Services Industry

By: DG Park, George Serafeim and Katie Trinh

We apply the product impact measurement framework of the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative (IWAI) in two competitor companies within the interactive media and services industry. We design a monetization methodology that allows us to calculate monetary impact... View Details

SSRN

January 1999
Case

State Street Corporation: Leading with Information Technology (B)

By: Stephen P. Bradley and Kelley Porter

With Multi-currency HORIZON, a real-time multi-currency accounting system that replaced the traditional batch-oriented single-currency accounting system, successfully launched, State Street Corp. (State Street) began to focus on growing the scope of its business... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Trends; Global Strategy; Growth and Development Strategy; Competitive Strategy; Information Technology; Value Creation; Financial Services Industry

Educators

Research Summary

Information and Control in Modern Manufacturing

Ratna Sarkar's research in management accounting focuses on the effect of information and incentives on performance. She has investigated the role of worker empowerment, training and inventory in modern manufacturing settings and her findings suggest that these... View Details

Research Summary

Of Measurement and Mission: Accounting for Performance in Non-Governmental Organizations

By: Debora L. Spar

As members of civil society NGOs would seem to have a built-in proclivity towards representation: towards working on behalf of some group of people, or toward some specific goal. Yet in practice such moments of accountability are rare. Unlike other social agents,... View Details

April 1999
Article

Keeping Score: Accounting and Issues and e-Commerce

By: David F. Hawkins

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Accounting

2008
Working Paper

Bank Accounting Standards in Mexico. A Layman's Guide to Changes 10 Years after the 1995 Bank Crisis

By: Gustavo A. Del Angel, Stephen Haber and Aldo Musacchio

After the 1995 crisis, the Mexican banking system experienced significant changes in bank accounting standards. Most of these changes took place between 1996 and 2001, and had a significant impact in the structure and interpretation of financial information of banks.... View Details

Keywords: Globalized Firms and Management; Accounting; Standards; Financial Crisis; Banks and Banking; Banking Industry; Mexico

Article

We Need Better Carbon Accounting. Here's How to Get There.

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Karthik Ramanna

Any effective system of greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting needs to measure each company’s supply-chain carbon impacts accurately. Such information would provide visibility and incentives for the company to make more climate-friendly product-specification and purchasing... View Details

Keywords: Accounting; Greenhouse Gas Emissions; GHG; Carbon Accounting; Environmental Accounting; Environmental Management; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Supply Chain

2016
Working Paper

The Structure of Board Committees

By: Kevin D. Chen and Andy Wu

We document and analyze board committee structures utilizing a novel dataset containing full board committee membership for over 6,000 firms. Board committees provide benefits (specialization, efficiency, and accountability benefits) and costs (information... View Details

Keywords: Board Of Directors; Board Committees; Specialization; Accountability; Information Segregation; Overloaded Directors; Multi-commitee Directors; Sarbanes-Oxley Act; Corporate Accountability; Governing and Advisory Boards; Accounting; Corporate Governance

30 Sep 2010
Working Paper Summaries

Does Mandatory IFRS Adoption Improve the Information Environment?

Keywords: by Joanne Horton, George Serafeim & Ioanna Serafeim

April 1972
Article

Investor Evaluation of Accounting Information: Some Empirical Evidence

By: Robert S. Kaplan and Richard Roll

Keywords: Accounting; Information

31 May 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Stock Price Synchronicity and Material Sustainability Information

Keywords: by Jody Grewal, Clarissa Hauptmann, and George Serafeim; Accounting; Accounting

2022
Case

Can Salesforce Compete in the Carbon Accounting Market?

By: Andrew J. Hoffman

This case describes Salesforce's development of Sustainability Cloud, a suite of software tools built to help companies measure, track, and report carbon emissions and other sustainability metrics. The goal of this case is to provide students with a background and... View Details

Keywords: Environmental Accounting; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Corporate Accountability; Applications and Software

Article

Gathering Data for Archival, Field, Survey, and Experimental Accounting Research

By: Robert Bloomfield, Mark W. Nelson and Eugene F. Soltes

In the published proceedings of the ﬁrst Journal of Accounting Research Conference, Vatter (1966) lamented that “Gathering direct and original facts is a tedious and difﬁcult task, and it is not surprising that such work is avoided.” For the 50th JAR Conference,... View Details

Keywords: Archival; Data; Experiment; Empirical Methods; Field Study; Analytics and Data Science; Surveys; Financial Reporting

May 1990 (Revised September 1994)
Background Note

Note on Financial Reporting Strategy and Analysis When Managers Have Proprietary Information

By: Krishna G. Palepu

Provides a framework that helps explain these real-world observations about accounting and financial statement analysis. When managers have superior information on firms' strategies, and when investors suspect that managers have incentives not to fully disclose this... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Strategy; Knowledge Management

Educators

05 Sep 2000
What Do You Think?

Whither the Information Economy?

be justified as the monetization of valuable information assets that accountants have never seen fit to include as legitimate entries on balance sheets (other than as grossly misnamed "goodwill").... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

2007
Working Paper

Evidence from Goodwill Non-impairments on the Effects of Unverifiable Fair-Value Accounting

By: Karthik Ramanna and Ross L. Watts

SFAS 142 requires firms to use unverifiable fair-value estimates to determine goodwill impairments. Standard setters suggest managers will use the discretion given by such estimates to convey private information on future cash flows, while agency theory predicts... View Details

Keywords: Fair Value Accounting; Goodwill Accounting; Standards; Agency Theory

SSRN

January 2022 (Revised March 2022)
Module Note

Analysis of Financial and Non-Financial Information for Forecasting Performance

By: Charles C.Y. Wang

This note describes the main themes and cases of a teaching module on the analysis of information from, and outside of, financial statements for forecasting firms’ future financial performance. The module’s pedagogical goal is to deepen students’ understanding of the... View Details

Keywords: Financial Reporting; Performance; Analysis; Valuation; Accounting; Finance