Accounting
About Our Accounting Faculty and Research
Our accounting faculty are trailblazing scholars who have made major contributions to accounting research and pedagogy. Their passion for educating future leaders — that means you — is apparent in their classrooms and frequently recognized by teaching awards.
"My research centers on financial reporting, regulation and corporate governance in financial institutions such as commercial and investment banks. The significance of regulation in the financial services industry is staggering. The response to heightened regulations by managers, regulators, auditors and investors differs because their incentives are often not perfectly aligned. I’m curious about what happens when those incentives diverge and what impact it might have on real decisions and financial reporting." - Hailey Ballew, Assistant Professor of Accounting
Accounting at Rice Business
The Accounting area at Rice Business combines intellectual breadth, research distinction and a strong commitment to teaching and mentoring. Our faculty examine how accounting information, incentives and institutions shape capital allocation, contracting, organizational decisions, regulation and markets. Their research spans analytical, archival, empirical, structural, institutional and historical approaches and frequently crosses the boundaries of accounting, finance and economics.
Faculty Strengths
Our faculty bring distinctive expertise across a wide range of areas:
- Accounting history, institutions and standard setting, including scholarship that has shaped the understanding of the development of accounting thought and the profession worldwide.
- Analytical accounting and information economics, with foundational research on information, measurement, incentives, contracting and organizational design.
- Managerial accounting, including the effects of accounting information on incentives, organizational decisions and management practice.
- Accounting and development economics, examining how accounting capabilities shape access to finance, productivity, growth and entrepreneurial decision-making among microenterprises in developing economies, especially firms operating in the informal economy.
- Capital markets, disclosure and public policy, examining how financial information affects investors, valuation, market behavior and regulation.
- Financial reporting, governance and valuation, including the interaction between transparency, governance mechanisms and capital markets.
- Disclosure, capital formation and social learning, with research spanning accounting, finance and economics and extending to healthcare markets.
- Debt markets, banking and financial contracting, including credit ratings, lending relationships, competition and the role of accounting information in credit allocation.
- Financial institutions and regulation, examining how regulatory interventions affect reporting, lending, risk-taking and other real decisions.
- Accounting standards and their economic consequences, including major changes in revenue recognition, lease accounting and financial measurement.
- Audit markets and regulatory effectiveness, using empirical and structural methods to study inspections, enforcement, competition and regulatory design.
- Information frictions and corporate communication, studying how uncertainty influences the production, disclosure and use of information by firms and their stakeholders.
- Information transmission across debt and equity markets, including how lenders, analysts and investors acquire and use accounting information and emerging applications of artificial intelligence.
Teaching and Mentoring
Research excellence is matched by an exceptional commitment to students. Accounting faculty teach across Rice's undergraduate, Master of Accounting, MBA and doctoral programs and have received numerous teaching and mentoring awards across all levels. These recognitions reflect a culture in which rigorous scholarship and serious investment in students reinforce one another.
Developing the Next Generation of Scholars
Our small, highly selective Accounting Ph.D. program has achieved exceptional success in developing and placing young scholars at leading research universities. Close faculty mentoring, intensive research training and sustained engagement with students are central to that record. Readers interested in our doctoral program, including recent student placements, can learn more on the Accounting Ph.D. program page.
What connects these diverse strengths is a common view of accounting as fundamental to how organizations and markets function. Our faculty seek to understand how information shapes decisions and economic outcomes, and to bring those insights to scholarship, the classroom, and the broader business community.
Sample Accounting Electives
These courses help students understand the way the business world operates.
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This course builds on earlier courses on cost management and corporate strategy and focuses on the management control systems that can be used for the effective implementation of strategy. Included topics are the balanced scorecard, stretch budgets, performance evaluation and incentives, organizational and operational controls, and the development of metrics to motivate and evaluate performance.
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Study of how investors, financial analysts, creditors, and managers use financial statement information in evaluating firm performance and in valuing firms. Emphasizes industry and firm-level analysis of accounting information using financial accounting concepts and finance theory.
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This course offers an advanced introduction into the Economics of Information with an emphasis on core business applications.
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This course is designed to develop basic skills in financial statement analysis with special emphasis on understanding, organizing and summarizing financial data for decision making purposes related to valuation. The course focuses on financial and accounting analysis which consists of documenting and understanding a firm's profitability relative to past performance and comparable firms. Ratio analysis, accounting quality, and earnings management are the focal points of this portion of the course.
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This course covers two major topics: 1) forecasting financial statements based on a complete historical analysis of the firm; 2) deriving firm value under a variety of approaches including discounted cash flows (DCF) and residual operating income valuation (ROPI).
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As healthcare costs continue to rise at an alarming rate in U.S., accurate cost measurement and management in healthcare delivery have become increasingly important. Traditional cost systems often fail to capture the true cost of treating patients, leading to challenges in operational decision-making and reimbursement.
This elective examines the nature of healthcare costs, how they are measured and how they can be managed more effectively. Students learn tools such as break-even analysis, cost allocation, activity-based costing, time-driven activity-based costing and cost control.
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This course is focused on identifying and developing logical tools for gaining precise insights into what are otherwise complex and seemingly intractable real life situations. The format is one of in-class group case solutions from the perspective of business consultants, followed by class discussion of the specific tools that works for broad classes of alike problems.
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Using case studies, the course will examine topics such as the roles and responsibilities of corporate boards, how to adapt corporate governance practices from private to public, the role of culture and financial incentives on ethics and corporate performance, the pros and cons of dual class structures, and the effects of shareholder activism.
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This course includes an in-depth analysis of certain complex financial accounting standards promulgated by the FASB and applied by practitioners in public accounting and industry. Topics include Bonds & Debt, Contingent Liabilities, Leases, Shareholders' Equity, Share-Based Compensation, Pensions and other Post-Retirement Employee Benefits, Earnings per Share, Income Tax Accounting, and Derivatives/Hedging.
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Examines the concepts of the integrated audit of internal control over financial reporting in accordance with PCAOB Audit Standard 5. Also covers fundamental procedures used in financial statement audits, specifically in the client acceptance and continuance, planning and risk assessment, and audit comfort cycle phases of the engagement.
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This course provides students with an in-depth understanding of professional standards, the audit process, advanced auditing techniques, and the auditor’s role. This course will use case studies to explore audit topics not extensively covered in a typical intro-auditing course, including planning/risk assessment, design and execution of procedures, testing techniques, and software tools.
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Introduction to federal income tax principles. Emphasis on general skills in identifying and resolving tax issues, understanding the administrative and public policy and reasoning underlying tax law choices and integrating the tax laws into business and personal decisions and planning. Coverage of taxation of C-corporations, S-corporations, and partnerships.
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Building on MGMT 603 Business Tax Strategy: Principles, this course considers tax strategy in several industries, including energy, real estate, health care, and entrepreneurship. Each setting provides unique tax challenges and opportunities. Students focus on an applied tax strategy project in their chosen industry of interest. MGMT 603 may be taken concurrently.
Faculty research applied in the classroom.