Ph.D. Program

Accounting Conference

Our faculty seminars are hosted by your area of study and closed to the public; distinguished faculty from other universities present their latest papers and findings.

At our UCLA Accounting Conference held April 21 and 22, 2017, Professor Paul Fischer of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania presented his paper, “Accounting Tinder: Acquisition of Information with Uncertain Precision,” co-authored with Mirko S. Heinle. Fischer and Heinle’s paper, and Fischer’s presentation, surrounded the development of a model of information acquisition in capital markets, which was then analyzed to explore how investors are uncertain about the precision of the private information before they acquire it. Fischer theorized that investors use prior prices and public information to estimate the precision and, therefore, value of the private information, finding that larger price to earnings deviations lead to more private information acquisition, higher future price volatility, and higher future trading volumes.

The conference also hosted Professor Phillip C. Stocken of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, who presented his paper, “Persuasion under Second-Order Uncertainty.” Co-authored with Patrick Hummel of Google and John Morgan from the University of California, Berkeley, Stocken’s presentation explored a general model of persuasion games, applying their findings to a corporate voluntary disclosure setting, offering novel empirical predictions. Accounting also hosted Rodrigo Verdi of the Sloan School of Management at MIT, whose paper “Financial Reporting Regulation and Financing Decisions” – co-authored with Patricia Naranjo of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University and UCLA Anderson’s Daniel Saavedra – studied the influence of a major reform in financial reporting regulation on financing decisions.

Job Market Papers

These seminars provide the opportunity to defend your work, receive research and career feedback, and influence others’ work lives. With the toughest audiences you will ever face, this experience is all about preparing you for your professional life and positioning you for candidacy as a faculty member at one of the world’s highest caliber institutions.