About

Ravi Bapna is the Curtis L. Carlson Chair Professor in Business Analytics and Information Systems and serves as the Academic Director of the Carlson Analytics Lab. He is closely affiliated with the Carlson School's MS in Business Analytics program and the Carlson Analytics Lab, where graduate students study a broad range of data analysis techniques and apply them to real business problems. These students are skilled in exploratory data visualization, predictive analytics techniques, programming, data engineering, machine learning methods, and more, emerging as data science professionals. Partner organizations have the opportunity to work with these talented students while supporting the educational mission of the programs. Faculty scholars from across the Carlson School and beyond bring expertise in areas such as computer science, econometrics, strategy, and causal experimentation to the Analytics for Good Institute, contributing to its mission of impactful engagement and research.

Research topics

• Business
• Accounting
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Economics
• Finance
• Actuarial science
• Law

Selected publications

• 2021 Excellence in Refereeing

  Journal of Accounting Research · 2022 · 1 citations

  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Accounting
  DOI

• Decision Facilitating Information and Induced Volatility: A Study of Tradeoffs in Accounting Disclosure

  The Accounting Review · 2022 · 8 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Accounting
  • Business

  ABSTRACT Corporate managers often express concern about accounting-induced volatility in financial statements. Accounting regulators, however, argue that the volatility in financial statements merely increases transparency by shining a light on risks that are inherent to the firm’s business. We show that in many situations managerial concerns about volatility are justified because the information that is being provided actually magnifies rather than merely reflects the volatility in a firm’s fundamentals. Corporate managers anticipate the magnified volatility and take preemptive actions to decrease the firm’s exposure to the accounting treatment that induces volatility. These actions may not be in the best interests of external stakeholders, making disclosure costly, while at the same time improving the decisions of external stakeholders. We develop and study the resultant tradeoff that accounting regulators should consider in setting accounting standards.

  PublisherDOI

• Reporting of Investment Expenditure: Should It Be Aggregated with Operating Cash Flows?

  The Accounting Review · 2022 · 11 citations

  • Business
  • Economics
  • Finance

  ABSTRACT Corporate managers are often better informed than outside investors about the uncertain future benefits of investments. However, information about investment prospects is not verifiable and therefore not amenable to direct disclosure, but instead inferred by investors from other accounting disclosures. Given this situation, we study the normative question of how the market’s perceptions of uncertainty and its beliefs about the expected level of future benefits of investment should factor into mandatory financial reports of investment expenditures. We establish a threshold of uncertainty in future benefits beyond which it is better to aggregate investment expenditures with cash flow from ongoing operations, rather than measuring and reporting the two separately. We obtain the surprising result that the higher the expectation of future benefits, the lower this uncertainty threshold should be. JEL Classifications: M40; M41; M48.

  PublisherDOI

• Trading Volume and Public Information in an Experimental Asset Market with Short-Horizon Traders

  ScholarSpace (University of Hawaii at Manoa) · 2019-08-31

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We examine the joint impact of investors’ trading horizons and public information on trading volume. We hypothesize that public information leads to relative homogenization in the traders’ beliefs about the fundamental value of an asset and this reduces their disagreement regarding the fundamental value. Since the long-horizon traders’ trade is motivated by the fundamental value, such reduced disagreement leads to a reduction in trading volume. We further hypothesize that public information leads to polarization in the traders’ beliefs about other traders’ beliefs about the fundamental value and this polarization increases disagreement regarding other traders’ beliefs about the fundamental value. Since short-horizon traders’ trade is motivated by other traders’ beliefs about the fundamental value, such increased disagreement leads to an increase in trading volume. We test these hypotheses in an experimental asset market and find strong evidence in their support.

  Publisher

• A Real Effects Perspective to Accounting Measurement and Disclosure: Implications and Insights for Future Research

  Journal of Accounting Research · 2016-01-27 · 104 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT Accounting measurement and disclosure rules have a significant impact on the real decisions that firms make. In this essay, we provide an analytical framework to illustrate how such real effects arise. Using this framework, we examine three specific measurement issues that remain controversial: (1) How does the measurement of investments affect a firm's investment efficiency? (2) How does the measurement and disclosure of a firm's derivative transactions affect a firm's choice of intrinsic risk exposures, risk management strategy, and the incentive to speculate? (3) How could marking‐to‐market the asset portfolios of financial institutions generate procyclical real effects? We draw upon these real effects studies to generate sharper and novel insights that we believe are useful not only for the development of accounting standards, but also for guiding future empirical research.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How Frequent Financial Reporting Can Cause Managerial Short‐Termism: An Analysis of the Costs and Benefits of Increasing Reporting Frequency

  Journal of Accounting Research · 2014-01-30 · 237 citations

  article

  ABSTRACT We develop a cost–benefit tradeoff that provides new insights into the frequency with which firms should be required to report the results of their operations to the capital market. The benefit to increasing the frequency of financial reporting is that it causes market prices to better deter investments in negative net present value projects. The cost of increased frequency is that it increases the probability of inducing managerial short‐termism. We analyze the tradeoff between these costs and benefits and develop conditions under which greater reporting frequency is desirable and conditions under which it is not.

  PublisherDOI

• Game Theory Models in Accounting

  International series in management science/operations research/International series in operations research & management science · 2013-05-13 · 10 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• How Frequent Financial Reporting Causes Managerial Short-Termism: An Analysis of the Costs and Benefits of Reporting Frequency

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2012-01-01 · 26 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Does information transparency decrease coordination failure?

  Games and Economic Behavior · 2010-04-03

  preprintSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Accounting Disclosure and Real Effects

  The Accounting Review · 2010-05-01 · 56 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Search Site Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Citation Chandra Kanodia, PIERRE JINGHONG LIANG; Accounting Disclosure and Real Effects. The Accounting Review 1 May 2010; 85 (3): 1119–1120. https://doi.org/10.2308/accr.2010.85.3.1119 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe Accounting Review Search Advanced Search

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Raghu Venugopalan

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  11 shared

• Haresh Sapra

  University of Chicago

  10 shared

• John Dickhaut

  University of Minnesota System

  8 shared

• Frank Gigler

  University of Minnesota

  5 shared

• Regina M. Anctil

  University of St. Thomas - Minnesota

  5 shared

• Jennifer Blouin

  4 shared

• Shane Heitzman

  4 shared

• Arijit Mukherji

  University of Minnesota

  4 shared