About

Graham Gal is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he has held the position since July 1992. He earned his PhD from Michigan State University in 1985 and his BA in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1976. His professional experience includes serving as Chair of the Outreach Committee and Co-Chair of the Internal Control Working Group within the Accounting Blockchain Coalition. Gal has also been a visiting professor at Istanbul University in 2015. His research interests encompass business ontologies, continuous auditing and reporting, information security, sustainability, and financial performance. He teaches courses related to IT audit and security at the master's level, as well as undergraduate courses in accounting information systems, systems analysis and design, and sustainability reporting. Gal has been recognized as a keynote speaker at international conferences and has held visiting scholar positions, including at Chuo University in Tokyo, Japan, in 2014. His scholarly work includes empirical analyses on integrated reports, external assurance, and financial performance, as well as studies on performance-based budgeting, internal audit and information security relationships, and IT security auditing.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Business
• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Social Science
• Sociology
• Development economics
• Law
• Labour economics
• Public relations
• Accounting
• Marketing
• Public economics
• Management
• Geography
• Macroeconomics
• Demographic economics
• International economics

Selected publications

• REA for Dummies: A Beginner’s Guide to One of the Most Important and Perplexing Innovations in Accounting

  Journal of Emerging Technologies in Accounting · 2026-03-01

  articleSenior author

  ABSTRACT The Resource, Events, and Agents (REA) model has been the subject of lively research for over 40 years since it was first developed by McCarthy (1982). That seminal paper has been cited over a thousand times, and the REA model is now the basis for many operational data bases. Our objective in this educational paper is to explain in simple terms what REA is, why it was created, and how it works. We return to the genesis of REA in McCarthy (1979, 1982) and place those papers in the context of accounting and computer technology developments at the time. We then define REA rather than relying on examples, and we explain concepts like duality and ontology that many readers find especially difficult. The audience for this paper is those who recognize the importance of REA but lack access to expert teachers who can help them learn it. JEL Classifications: M2; M4; M41.

  PublisherDOI

• Financial globalization, global accounting standards and economic growth

  International Review of Economics & Finance · 2025-08-18 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  • The adoption of IFRS facilitates the integration of countries into the global financial system. • IFRS and financial globalization have a significant impact on financial development. • The effect of financial globalization on economic growth is enhanced by IFRS.

  PublisherDOI

• Customers Increase Financial Performance of Socially Responsible Firms

  Sustainability · 2025-11-12 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Previous survey research has documented that consumers place value on socially responsible firms. This support includes the intention to be more loyal to these firms and also the willingness to pay higher prices for their products. Our study connects the customer intentions documented in survey research with actual measures of financial performance from published financial statements. The study uses gross profits scaled by total assets as a proxy for customers’ willingness to pay higher prices and sales increases as a proxy for loyalty. Additionally, the study examines differences in the aforementioned measures between customers in the business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) segments. These differences have been documented in studies that suggest customers in these segments value different characteristics of suppliers when making their purchases. Finally, customers must be made aware of a firm’s sustainability practices; therefore, the study looks at three different approaches firms use to communicate the quality of their sustainability practices. These approaches include external assurance of the social responsibility report, the auditor’s review of the firm’s internal controls, and the firm’s advertising intensity. Data used in this study includes financial performance measures of North American firms and corporate social responsibility data from disclosures collected by the Global Reporting Initiative. Using ordinary least squares, the results suggest that customers require some sort of assurance of a company’s socially responsible disclosures when making decisions about whether to support the company.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Controlling the Release of Sensitive Information by Creating Integer Representations of Inferences

  Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2025-12-14

  article1st authorCorresponding

  There have been continued efforts to improve information available for investors. Among the suggested approaches arguments have been made that continuous reporting may benefit investors and other stakeholders, however, a system that makes information immediately available does present some concerns. Certainly, information that is timelier, has zero time-lag, and that is based on individual requests, is a better match for investors’ decision models, so it can improve the information’s usefulness. However, users that make continuous requests about the company’s operations could obtain sensitive information. This paper addresses this problem by showing how inferences can be represented as integers, and this approach can keep sensitive information from being revealed by a continuous reporting system.

  Publisher

• Metaphysics of Internal Control

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• IFRS, financial development and income inequality: An empirical study using mediation analysis

  Economic Systems · 2022 · 9 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Economics
  • Demographic economics
  PublisherDOI

• Inferences: Integrals and Derivatives

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Ontology-Driven Audit Using the REA-Ontology

  Lecture notes in business information processing · 2021-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• THE EXTERNAL FINANCIAL STATEMENT AUDIT PROCESS AND BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

  DergiPark (Istanbul University) · 2021-07-31 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDF

• IFRS, FDI, economic growth and human development: The experience of Anglophone and Francophone African countries

  Emerging Markets Review · 2020 · 71 citations

  • Political Science
  • International economics
  • Political Science
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kai Umeda

  Tokyo Metropolitan Tama Medical Center

  14 shared

• Orhan Akisik

  9 shared

• Bronson K. Strickland

  Mississippi State University

  8 shared

• Paul John Steinbart

  7 shared

• William N. Dilla

  Iowa State University

  5 shared

• Robyn L. Raschke

  University of Nevada, Las Vegas

  5 shared

• Farzaneh Jalali Aliabadi

  La Trobe University

  5 shared

• J. Murrieta

  4 shared

Education

• Phd, Accounting and Information Systems

  Michigan State University

  1985

• Bachelors, Economics

  University of Michigan

  1976

Awards & honors

• Visiting Scholar Chuo University Tokyo, Japan (2014)
• Keynote Speaker Dialectical Accounting Symposium Zigana, Tur…
• Keynote Speaker MODAV Istanbul, Turkey (2013)