Skip to main content

Empirical Research in Accounting: Tools and Methods

Welcome

This is the on-line version of the work-in-progress edition of Empirical Research in Accounting: Tools and Methods.

The book is being written by Ian D. Gow and Tony Ding. On this page, we detail recent changes to the book (Section 0.1 below), as well as materials planned to be added in coming months (Section 0.2 below)

0.1 Recent changes

  • April 2023
    • Prepared templates for most of Parts I and II
    • Polished material on the efficient markets hypothesis
    • Polished chapter on event studies
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
    • Added “data science bootcamp” chapter (Chapter 2)
    • Added chapter on prediction (Chapter 27)
  • September 2022
    • Added material on Zhang (2007) to event studies chapter
    • Refined chapter on matching
  • August 2022
    • Added material on Beaver (1968).
  • July 2022
    • Added more material to SQL primer (appendix)
  • June 2022
    • Organized book into parts. See Section 1.4 for more on how the book is structured.
    • Initial draft of second chapter on natural experiments
    • Added material on evaluating natural experiments and the parallel trends assumption to Chapter 20
  • April 2022
    • Filled out chapter on accrual anomaly (Sloan, 1996)
    • Added chapter on earnings management mostly focused on DSS (1995)
  • January 2022
    • Added separate chapter on FFJR (1969)
    • Added separate chapter on Ball and Brown (1968)
  • November 2021
    • Added chapter on RDD
    • Added simulation from Leone et al. (2019)
  • October 2021
    • Added chapter on natural experiments
  • July 2021
    • Added chapter on panel data
    • Extensive revisions to material on IV

0.2 Materials to come

Many distractions (teaching and so on) have kept us from making our previous timetable. We are currently teaching a course based on this book and thus needing to tidy up messy chapters and finish up incomplete chapters. Below is our current work plan.

Methods (Jun 2023)

  • Build up materials in “miscellaneous methods” chapter, perhaps making two chapters
  • Chapter on selection models and limited dependent variables

Accruals (June 2023)

  • Build up simulations using (somewhat) realistic models of actual business and accounting processes
  • Coverage of accrual quality models, including Dechow and Dichev (2002)

Structural models (July 2023)

  • Include material on structural models from Gow, Larcker and Reiss (2016)
  • Explicitly discuss weaknesses implicit in Gow, Larcker and Reiss (2016) material
  • Add an application, perhaps the one from Bertomeu, Beyer, and Taylor (“BBT”)
  • Examine a modification of BBT’s model

If you have suggestions for the book or requests, please feel free to contact either Ian or Tony. Alternatively, you may create a new issue describing your suggestion in the repository for the companion package for this course here.