About

I am an Associate Professor of Accounting and William Graham Faculty Scholar at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. My research focuses on how accounting standards affect investor and firm decisions. I am particularly interested in the accounting for intangible assets, like patents and human capital, because they are an increasingly important aspect of firms' businesses.

Research topics

• Accounting
• Economics
• Business
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Monetary economics
• Public economics
• Econometrics
• Actuarial science
• Market economy
• Finance

Selected publications

• Competition Enforcement and Accounting for Intangible Capital

  The Journal of Finance · 2026-02-06

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Antitrust laws mandate review of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) that exceed an asset size threshold based on accounting standards that exclude most intangible capital. We show that this exclusion leads to thousands of intangible‐intensive M&As being nonreportable. Acquirers in nonreportable deals achieve higher equity values and price markups, especially when consolidating product markets. Furthermore, nonreportable pharmaceutical deals are three times more likely to involve overlapping drug projects, which are subsequently 40% more likely to be terminated. Our results suggest that the growth of intangible assets may exacerbate market power through nonreportable consolidation of the sectors most concerning for consumers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Limited Corporate Response to DEI Controversies

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Quantifying Intangible Capital Shares and their Implications for Productivity and Growth 

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• CHRO Compensation and Strategic Human Capital Management

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Accounting for Goodwill

  Journal of Accounting Research · 2025-04-18 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT A significant portion of a merger's purchase price is allocated to goodwill. Currently, goodwill is not amortized but rather tested annually for impairment. When managers of acquiring firms care about earnings, goodwill's accounting treatment can have large effects on future earnings and may influence how much a manager will bid for a target company. We quantify the effects of goodwill accounting by estimating a structural model of corporate takeovers. Our estimates suggest accrual accounting increases buyout premia by an average of approximately 11 percentage points. If firms needed to amortize goodwill over 10 years, we estimate premia would reduce by 4.9 percentage points and M&A volume would shrink by 4.1% or $67 billion per year. Furthermore, the fraction of private equity acquirers would increase by 6.9 percentage points, shifting control over productive assets to the private and financial sector. Our results suggest the accounting treatment for goodwill has a meaningful effect on the market for corporate control.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Information acquisition costs and price informativeness: global evidence

  Review of Accounting Studies · 2025-07-22 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract We study how global changes in information acquisition costs through disclosure technologies affect price informativeness. To explore this issue, we examine worldwide adoptions of centralized electronic disclosure systems, which significantly reduce the cost of and broaden access to financial disclosures. Consistent with theory, we show a significant reduction in private information acquisition around earnings announcements as a result of these adoptions. These effects are most pronounced in countries with the most substantial reductions in information acquisition costs and where we find more significant decreases in informed trade. Overall, we highlight an important, unintended cost of broadening access to financial disclosures through technology adoptions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Competition Enforcement and Accounting for Intangible Capital

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 3 citations

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Information Supporting Investor Valuations: Evidence from a Comparative Content Analysis of Analyst Reports and Form 10-K

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Diversity Washing

  Journal of Accounting Research · 2024-04-25 · 111 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT We provide large‐sample evidence on whether U.S. publicly traded corporations use voluntary disclosures about their commitments to employee diversity opportunistically. We document significant discrepancies between companies' external stances on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and their hiring practices. Firms that discuss DEI excessively relative to their actual employee gender and racial diversity (“diversity washers”) obtain superior scores from environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rating organizations and attract more investment from institutional investors with an ESG focus. These outcomes occur even though diversity‐washing firms are more likely to incur discrimination violations and have negative human‐capital‐related news events. Our study provides evidence consistent with growing allegations of misleading statements from firms about their DEI initiatives and highlights the potential consequences of selective ESG disclosures.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How Costly is Tax Avoidance? Evidence from Structural Estimation

  The Accounting Review · 2023 · 29 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Economics
  • Monetary economics
  • Business

  ABSTRACT I develop a structural model to quantify the costs of tax avoidance. In the model, the firm trades off tax savings with tax audit risk, financial reporting considerations, and operational frictions imposed by tax avoidance, the last of which I label as nontax costs. The estimated parameters suggest nontax costs, which are difficult to observe, decrease pretax income by 6.4 percent or $58 million per firm-year. The large magnitude of this estimate can explain why firms appear to underutilize tax avoidance strategies. Through counterfactual analysis, I estimate the effect of tax audit risk and financial reporting considerations to find that financial reporting considerations have an effect on tax avoidance similar to the penalties imposed by tax authorities. Overall, the estimated parameters help explain the “undersheltering puzzle.” JEL Classifications: G14; H21; H25; H26; M41; M48.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• David F. Larcker

  European Corporate Governance Institute

  12 shared

• Ed deHaan

  Stanford University

  4 shared

• Edward M. Watts

  3 shared

• Mary E. Barth

  3 shared

• Christina Zhu

  3 shared

• Ken Li

  McMaster University

  3 shared

• Durgesh Saraph

  Film Independent

  2 shared

• Stefan Huber

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Stanford Graduate School of Business

• M.A.

  Duke University

• B.S., Civil Engineering

  Cornell University

Awards & honors

• William Graham Faculty Scholar