The objective of the course is to introduce students to research topics in accounting. Both theoretical and empirical research will receive much attention in the course. The students will understand which accounting issues are important, why they are important, and how these research issues might be explored. Selected accounting research issues covered in the course are informational perspective of accounting, measurement perspective of accounting, positive accounting research, earnings management, disclosure quality, etc.

This course is an applied seminar that focus on methodological issues in accounting and finance empirical research. Issued covered include earnings quality, disclosure quality, mark to market, executive compensation, standard setting, income taxes, institutional ownerships, relevance of earnings to valuation, etc. By focusing on a few selected topics, intuitions and especially research methodologies could be better discussed in detail.