Katherine Schipper

Ideal for graduate, MBA, and rigorous undergraduate programs, FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING: AN INTRODUCTION TO CONCEPTS, METHODS, AND USES 14e presents both the basic concepts underlying financial statements and the terminology and methods that allows the reader to interpret, analyze, and evaluate corporate financial statements. Fully integrating the latest International Financial Reporting Standards, inclusive of the latest developments on Fair Value Accounting, and now more streamlined for busy students, this text provides the highest return on your financial accounting course investment. With great clarity, this widely respected financial accounting text paces students appropriately as they learn both the skills and applications of basic accounting in earlier chapters as well as the impart the concepts and analysis skills they will use as future business leaders.

Causal Inferences in Capital Markets Research is an attempt to promote a broad interdisciplinary debate about the notion of causality and the role of causal inference in the social sciences. At the risk of oversimplifying, the issue of causality divides the accounting research community in two polar views: the view that causality is an unattainable ideal for the social sciences and must be given up as a standard, and the view that, on one hand, causality should be the ultimate goal of all scientific endeavors and, on the other hand, theory and causal inference are inextricable. Reflecting and discussing these views was the main motivation for this volume. This volume contains eight articles on three topics: I) Econometrics; III) Accounting, and III) Finance. First, Nancy Cartwright addresses the problem of external validity and the reliability of scientific claims that generalize individual cases. Then, John Rust discusses the role of assumptions in empirical research and the possibility of assumption-free inference. Peter Reiss considers the question how sensitive are instrumental variables to functional form transformations. Finally, Charles Manski studies the logical issues that affect the interpretation of point predictions. Second, Jeremy Bertomeu, Anne Beyer and Daniel Taylor provide a critical overview of empirical accounting research focusing on the benefits of theory-based estimation, while Qi Chen and Katherine Schipper consider the question whether all research should be causal and assess the existing gap between theory and empirical research in accounting. Third, R. Jay Kahn and Toni Whited clarifies and contrasts the notions of identification and causality, whereas Ivo Welch adopts a sociology of science approach to understand the consequences of the researchers’ race for discovering novel and surprising results. This volume allows researchers and Ph. D students in accounting, and the social sciences in general, to acquire a deeper understanding of the notion of causality and the nature, limits, and scope of empirical research in the social sciences.

The purpose of this monograph is to present practical and conceptual issues related to fair value Measurement in financial reporting and to evaluate certain research design aspects of empirical research that investigates the information properties of fair value Measurement, both in an absolute sense and in comparison to other Measurement bases. Although the primary focus is on fair value Measurement, the evaluation of existing research and suggestions for future research are germane to researchers interested in examining the information properties of any accounting Measurement basis. The 2008 financial crisis increased public scrutiny and brought accounting Measurement to the forefront of policy debate, including debate characterized by polarizing rhetoric. Fair Value Measurement in Financial Reporting focuses the discussion on the design and execution of rigorous, inferentially valid empirical research that can inform this debate. The authors begin with a historical overview of the use of fair value Measurement based on the writings of prominent nineteenth and twentieth century accounting scholars. Except in the historical overview, the discussion is structured around the conceptual frameworks developed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board and International Accounting Standards Board. This has two advantages: (1) this structure helps to link research to the practical task of Setting accounting standards guided by the conceptual framework, and (2) it makes salient some of the difficulties encountered in the design and interpretation of research related to fair value Measurement. Following the introduction, section 2 describes the fair value Measurement attribute and distinguishes it from "fair value accounting". Section 3 discusses concepts related to the decision usefulness of financial statement elements Measured using the fair value attribute. Section 4 analyzes the enhancing qualitative characteristic verifiability in the context of accounting Measurement. Section 5 discusses the relation between fair value Measurement and macroeconomic effects. Finally, the authors discuss claims that use of the fair value Measurement attribute causes procyclical behavior among financial institutions and that accounting standards have become increasingly fair-value-oriented during the last two decades.

Earnings Quality reviews current research activities around earnings quality. It provides an overview of alternative definitions and measures of earnings quality and a discussion of research design choices encountered in earnings quality research with a focus on capital markets. It examines how the precision of financial information affects the assessment and use of that information by capital market participants. The authors' main focus is on the precision of earnings, which is viewed as a summary indicator of the overall quality of financial reporting. The authors review: earnings quality and place earnings quality in the context of overall capital market information quality; the determinants of earnings quality, broadly separated into intrinsic determinants that derive from business models and operating environments and reporting determinants that derive from the management's implementation decisions in financial reporting process; twelve measures of earnings quality providing examples of research using these measures, and offer views on which measures are preferable in a given context; research design issues and research findings pertaining to the capital market consequences of earnings quality, in particular its association with expected returns (or the cost of capital) and unexpected (abnormal) returns. Earnings Quality is of interest to many participants in the financial reporting process including standard setters, preparers, auditors, regulators, analysts, and financial press commentators. It is of equal interest to accounting educators and researchers.