About

Richard Sloan is a professor of accounting, finance, and business economics at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business. He has also served on the faculties of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, and University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. While at the University of Michigan, Sloan was the founding director of the John R. and Georgene M. Tozzi Electronic Business and Finance Center. From 2006 to 2009, he worked as a managing director in equity research at Barclays Global Investors. His research focuses on the role of accounting information in investment decisions. Sloan’s work has been cited in Bloomberg Tax, highlighting his expertise in financial auditing and accounting, particularly noting that cases tend to decline during the first year of a new presidential administration as new division directors are hired. He has been appointed to the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council (FASAC) and is the Deloitte and Touche LLP Chair in Accounting at USC Marshall. Sloan’s contributions include advising on financial reporting standards and advancing understanding of how accounting information influences investment and business strategies.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Economics
• Data Mining
• Actuarial science
• Econometrics
• Accounting
• Financial economics
• Business
• Monetary economics
• Finance

Selected publications

• Do sustainability reports contain financially material information?

  Review of Accounting Studies · 2025-10-27 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Recent years have witnessed significant growth in corporate sustainability reporting. Yet existing research provides mixed evidence on the information content of these reports for investors. We examine the stock market reaction to the announcement of a sample of US corporate sustainability reports incorporating Sustainability Accounting Standards Board metrics that are intended to provide financially material information to investors. Using standard measures of information content, we cannot find compelling evidence that these reports provide a significant amount of new information to investors. Further analysis of a subset of common metrics indicates that they are either financially immaterial or preempted by traditional financial disclosures. Finally, we show that most firms target their sustainability reports at a broad set of sustainability-oriented stakeholders rather than a narrow set of financially oriented investors.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Intangible Asset Specificity

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Insights from 100 Years of <i>The Accounting Review</i> : An External Reporting Perspective

  The Accounting Review · 2025-09-19 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT Publications on external reporting have played an important role in the first 100 years of The Accounting Review. The first 40 years featured publications prescribing desirable financial accounting principles. The next 45 years featured archival empirical research focusing on managers’ financial accounting choices and the use of financial accounting information by capital market participants. The most recent 15 years have been characterized by growth in research on sustainability reporting. I briefly summarize this research and propose opportunities for future research. Data Availability: Data are publicly available from sources indicated in the text.

  PublisherDOI

• A university-community college partnership to help private well owners with groundwater quality challenges while increasing geoscience recruiting

  Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2025-01-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Retail investors and ESG news: A discussion

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2024-08-02 · 11 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Distinguishing between recurring and nonrecurring components of earnings using unobserved components modeling

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2024-03-24 · 5 citations

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Predictable EPS growth and the performance of value investing

  Review of Accounting Studies · 2023-11-09 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Previous research finds that EPS growth rates are difficult to predict and reasons that much of the observed cross-sectional variation in valuation ratios is due to variation in implied future stock returns. Yet the observed cross-sectional relation between valuation ratios and realized future stock returns is weak. We revisit these findings using a refined measure of expected EPS growth rates and document robust evidence of predictability in EPS growth rates. Moreover, we find that this predictable growth extends beyond two years into the future and is strongly reflected in observed valuation ratios. We show that combining valuation ratios with our refined measure of expected EPS growth rates improves forecasts of stock returns, though return predictability remains weak. Thus, we conclude that most of the variation in valuation ratios is driven by predictable EPS growth.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Identifying Transitory Components of Earnings

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Implied Equity Duration: A Measure of Pandemic Shutdown Risk

  Journal of Accounting Research · 2021 · 44 citations

  • Economics
  • Econometrics
  • Financial economics

  ABSTRACT Implied equity duration was originally developed to analyze the sensitivity of equity prices to discount rate changes. We demonstrate that implied equity duration is also useful for analyzing the sensitivity of equity prices to pandemic shutdowns. Pandemic shutdowns primarily impact short‐term cash flows, thus they have a greater impact on low‐duration equities. We show that implied equity duration has a strong positive relation to U.S. equity returns and analyst forecast revisions during the onset of the 2020 COVID‐19 shutdown. Our analysis also demonstrates that the underperformance of “value” stocks during this period is a rational response to their lower durations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Valuation Uncertainty and Short-Sales Constraints: Evidence from the IPO Aftermarket

  Management Science · 2021-02-26 · 15 citations

  article

  We use the initial public offering (IPO) setting to provide evidence that the combination of valuation uncertainty and short-sales constraints generates significant equity market mispricing. The IPOs that we predict to be most susceptible to overpricing in the immediate aftermarket have first-day returns of +47% and lockup expiration returns of [Formula: see text]9%. Our detailed analysis of securities lending market data confirms that these IPOs experience severe short-sales constraints that peak around the lockup expiration. Our paper both explains the anomalous pricing of IPOs and highlights the importance of valuation uncertainty and short-sales constraints in explaining equity mispricing. This paper was accepted by Brian Bushee, accounting.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Patricia Dechow

  University of Southern California

  37 shared

• Scott Richardson

  16 shared

• Scott A. Richardson

  12 shared

• Amy P. Hutton

  Boston College

  12 shared

• Mark T. Bradshaw

  Boston College

  9 shared

• Haifeng You

  9 shared

• Mark T. Soliman

  University of Southern California

  8 shared

• Jenny Zha Giedt

  George Washington University

  7 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  University of Southern California

• M.S.

  University of California, Berkeley

• B.S.

  University of Michigan

Awards & honors

• Richard Sloan Will Advise FASB
• Richard Sloan Appointed to Financial Accounting Standards Ad…