About

Luann J. Lynch is the Almand R. Coleman Professor of Business Administration at the UVA Darden School of Business. She teaches accounting in the First Year core MBA program and a Second Year elective in management accounting. Her research primarily focuses on the design and impact of incentive and compensation systems, exploring how these systems are structured to encourage desired behaviors by individuals or organizations. Her work has examined incentive issues related to stock options, compensation in post-merger integration efforts, and the effects of financial reporting, accounting, and regulation on incentive compensation. Lynch has published her research in leading accounting and finance journals, including The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Accounting Studies. She has held notable positions such as the Robert F. Vandell research chair at Darden and received the Glen McLaughlin Prize for Research in Accounting Ethics. Her academic background includes a B.S. from Meredith College, an MBA from Duke University, and a Ph.D. in accounting from the University of North Carolina. She has also taught at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and in the master of accounting program at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC. Her professional experience includes roles in finance and accounting at Roche Biomedical Laboratories Inc., Northern Telecom, and Procter & Gamble.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Finance
• Business
• Political Science
• Accounting
• Economics
• Microeconomics
• Computer Security
• Law
• Psychology
• Industrial organization
• Marketing
• Actuarial science
• Econometrics

Selected publications

• Accounting for Property, Plant, and Equipment and Depreciation Expense

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Accounting for Owners' Equity

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Common Wealth Crush: Pricing for Profit

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• An Introduction to Cost Allocation

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• A Brief Introduction to Managerial Accounting

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Relevant Costs and Benefits in Decision-Making: Application to Selected Management Decisions

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Revenue Recognition (Topic 606) at Salesforce.com, Inc.

  Darden Business Publishing Cases · 2024-04-23

  article

  This case uses an array of carefully selected and excerpted revenue recognition related information contained in Salesforce.com 's January 31, 2019, 10-K. Maria, the fictional protagonist, is seeking to understand those disclosures as part of her preparation for an upcoming job interview with the company. As such, she is relying on those disclosures to provide insights as to the company's main product/service lines, the events that signal when and how much revenue the company has earned (i.e., the essence of its business model), along with the related official generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) criteria pertinent to the valuing and timing of recorded revenues.

  PublisherDOI

• Complexity of CEO compensation packages

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2024-06-27 · 17 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• COVID-19-Motivated Changes to Executive Compensation

  Journal of Management Accounting Research · 2024-07-02 · 7 citations

  article

  ABSTRACT We provide new insights into companies’ decisions to cut CEO pay during the COVID-19 pandemic by comparing 482 firms announcing CEO salary cuts with those that do not. We find that salary cuts are more prevalent in firms with poor pre-pandemic performance, lower cash holdings, employee layoffs, and better governance. Shareholders appear to view these cuts favorably in firms with higher CEO pay ratios and those that are the first among their peer firms to make such an announcement. These findings suggest that pay cuts reflect efforts to adjust pay efficiently in response to changes in contracting environments and to lend legitimacy to other difficult decisions that firms face, alongside governance characteristics. We also find that CEO salary cuts coincide with well-timed equity grants that appreciate in value more than those in noncutting firms and with a shift away from earnings-based metrics in performance-based incentive plans. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: G34; M12; M21; M52.

  PublisherDOI

• ESG Mutual Fund Voting on Executive Compensation Shareholder Proposals

  Journal of Management Accounting Research · 2023 · 16 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Business
  • Accounting
  • Finance

  ABSTRACT We investigate how mutual funds with environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives vote on shareholder proposals related to executive compensation. Using a sample of 94,695 votes by 2,354 mutual funds from 2012 to 2021, we find ESG funds are 9.4 percent more likely than non-ESG funds to vote in favor of such proposals, and the likelihood increases to 19.2 percent for proposals aligning executive compensation with environmental and social (ES) objectives. ESG funds are also 14.9 percent more likely to support proposals to improve transparency, but only 7.0 percent more likely to support proposals about redesigning compensation. Our results are consistent with ESG funds perceiving greater net benefits from supporting shareholder compensation proposals, particularly those related to ES objectives and transparency. Additionally, funds committed to ESG objectives in regulatory filings are more likely to support such proposals than fund families that voluntarily signed the United Nations’ Principles of Responsible Investment. JEL Classifications: G23; G30; M12; M14.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Mary Ellen Carter

  Boston College

  29 shared

• Mark E. Haskins

  16 shared

• Richard Brownlee

  University of Virginia

  16 shared

• Mary Margaret Frank

  12 shared

• Ana M. Albuquerque

  Boston University

  9 shared

• Susan Chaplinsky

  University of Virginia

  7 shared

• Sonja O. Rego

  Indiana University Bloomington

  6 shared

• Paul F. Doherty

  Colorado State University

  5 shared

Awards & honors

• University of Virginia Alumni Board of Trustees Teaching Awa…
• Robert F. Vandell research chair at Darden (2006-2009)
• Glen McLaughlin Prize for Research in Accounting Ethics (200…