Questions I have looked at

My research is focused on accounting, disclosure and financial reporting, in particular, my recent work intersects the following areas:

1. standard-setting institutions and the political process.

• What type of measurements do majorities agree on? Conservative, impairment-like (see here).
• Should we delegate accounting to politicians? No (see here and here).
• How do we build a politically independent strong standard-setting institution? Competing standard-setters (see here).

2. cost of capital and macroeconomic implications of accounting (see my survey here.)

• Does better stewardship reduce the cost of capital? Generally no (see here).
• Does voluntary disclosure improve financing terms and liquidity? Yes (see here).
• Can an aggregate accounting quality factor explain expected returns? Yes (see here).
• Does more transparency about collateral always facilitate credit? No (see here).
• How do we test a purely accounting based model of the cost of capital? Using the implied exclusions from residual income valuation (see here).

3. how strategic are financial disclosures? (and how to detect this)

• Do collusive industries disclose differently? Their voluntary disclosures co-vary with the cycle (see here and here).
• Should CEO contracts be disclosed? Yes if fully reported but no if only performance-pay is reported (see here).
• Does conservatism necessarily reduce earnings manipulation? No (see here).
• How informative is soft unverifiable information? Bad soft information can be more informative than hard information (see here).
• How much do managers strategically release their forecasts? Not so much, probably less than 10% of the time (see here).