About

Weili Ge is a Professor of Accounting at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business, where he has held positions since 2006. He earned his PhD from the University of Michigan in 2006, his MS from Washington University in St. Louis in 2001, and his BE from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics in 1999. His research focuses on financial accounting, with particular interest in predicting accounting misstatements, earnings quality, internal control over financial reporting, and determinants and consequences of earnings management. He has contributed extensively to the field through numerous publications in leading journals and has been recognized with multiple awards for teaching excellence and research, including the Charles Summer Memorial Teaching Award and the University of Washington Distinguished Teaching Award. Ge also serves as an editor and reviewer for several prominent accounting journals and is actively involved in academic service and consulting activities.

Research topics

• Business
• Accounting
• Economics
• Political Science
• Finance
• Management
• Computer Science
• Social psychology
• Public relations
• Psychology
• Microeconomics

Selected publications

• Beyond Earnings Quality: Evaluating the Quality of Voluntary Corporate Financial Reporting Practices

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

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The Role of the Human Element: Managerial Characteristics and the Financial Reporting Environment

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Research Handbook on the Financial Reporting Environment

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Prosocial CEOs, corporate policies, and firm value

  Review of Accounting Studies · 2023 · 37 citations

  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Social psychology
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Prosocial CEOs and Accounting Information Quality

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Internal Control over Financial Reporting and Resource Extraction: Evidence from China

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-10-02 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We examine whether the strength of internal control over financial reporting (internal control) reduces the expropriation of resources from the firm by managers and controlling shareholders. Although we have ample evidence from prior literature that internal controls reduce errors in financial reports, it is less clear that they can curb resource extraction, because management may fail to enforce these controls. Exploiting the setting of China, where we have a rich internal control dataset and established measures of resource extraction, we provide evidence consistent with internal controls curbing resource extraction on average. In particular, we document a negative association between internal control strength and resource extraction. We also find that the association between internal control strength and resource extraction is weaker in settings where we expect management to have fewer incentives to enforce these controls: within state-owned firms and within non-state-owned firms that have a powerful controlling shareholder. We interpret these results as suggesting that internal controls must both exist and be enforced by management for the controls to safeguard assets. Although the analyses are conducted using Chinese data, we expect the spirit of our findings to generalize to other settings — management can “window dress” internal control procedures while still engaging in undesirable behavior.

  Publisher

• Internal Control over Financial Reporting and Resource Extraction: Evidence from China*

  Contemporary Accounting Research · 2020 · 93 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Business
  • Accounting

  ABSTRACT We examine whether the strength of internal control over financial reporting (internal control) reduces the expropriation of resources from the firm by managers and controlling shareholders. Although we have ample evidence from prior literature that internal controls reduce errors in financial reports, it is less clear that they can curb resource extraction, because management may fail to enforce these controls. Exploiting the setting of China, where we have a rich internal control data set and established measures of resource extraction, we provide evidence consistent with internal controls curbing resource extraction on average. In particular, we document a negative association between internal control strength and resource extraction. We also find that the association between internal control strength and resource extraction is weaker in settings where we expect management to have fewer incentives to enforce these controls: within state‐owned firms and within non‐state‐owned firms that have a powerful controlling shareholder. We interpret these results as suggesting that internal controls must both exist and be enforced by management for the controls to safeguard assets. Although the analyses are conducted using Chinese data, we expect the spirit of our findings to generalize to other settings—management can “window dress” internal control procedures while still engaging in undesirable behavior.

  PublisherDOI

• Implied Tradeoffs of Chief Financial Officer Accounting Expertise: Evidence from Firm-Manager Matching

  Management Science · 2020 · 37 citations

  • Accounting
  • Business
  • Finance

  We present evidence that although individuals with accounting expertise bring key skills to the financial reporting responsibilities of the chief financial officer (CFO) position, they tend to lack educational and career experiences relevant to nonaccounting responsibilities (e.g., operations and strategy). Assuming boards’ perceptions of CFO accounting expertise are correct on average, we provide evidence of tradeoffs of CFO accounting expertise by examining how differences in CFO backgrounds shape executive employment decisions. Firms with greater demand for nonaccounting expertise are less likely to hire an accounting expert CFO, consistent with ex ante firm-manager matching. Ex post, significant declines in firm-manager fit predict CFO turnover and other compensating changes in the composition of the senior management team. Accounting expert CFOs are also less likely to become chief executive officers, suggesting that CFO experience does not fully mitigate these tradeoffs. Collectively, the results suggest important tradeoffs inherent to CFO accounting expertise that shape the structure of the senior management team. This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting.

  PublisherDOI

• CEOs’ Prosocial Behavior, Their Careers and Corporate Policies

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-01-01 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• <scp>CFO</scp> Effort and Public Firms' Financial Information Environment*

  Contemporary Accounting Research · 2020-05-25 · 17 citations

  article

  ABSTRACT We test the association between CFO effort and the quality of public firms' financial information environments. We evaluate this relation using a measure of CFO leisure consumption—specifically, the amount of golf played—as an inverse proxy for effort. We find a negative relation between CFOs' compensation incentives and golf play, suggesting they exert more effort when they have greater incentives to increase firm value. High CFO leisure consumption is associated with lower earnings quality, less accurate earnings guidance, and reduced CFO conference call participation. Additionally, CFO leisure appears to affect external monitors, as it is associated with greater analyst forecast dispersion and increased audit fees. We do not find similar relations when evaluating the amount of golf played by CEOs, suggesting the unique importance of CFO effort in the financial reporting process.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Sarah E. McVay

  14 shared

• Jenny Li Zhang

  10 shared

• Dawn A. Matsumoto

  University of Washington

  10 shared

• Patricia Dechow

  University of Southern California

  8 shared

• Mei Feng

  University of Pittsburgh

  8 shared

• Zining Li

  University of Florida

  7 shared

• Terry Shevlin

  6 shared

• Jeffrey T. Doyle

  Utah State University

  5 shared

Labs

• Weili GePI

Awards & honors

• Charles Summer Memorial Teaching Award, 2025
• University of Washington Distinguished Teaching Award, 2021
• PhD Faculty Mentor Award, 2020
• MBA Evening Class of 2021 Professor of the Year, 2019
• MBA Evening Class of 2020 Professor of the Year, 2018