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We examine the academic accounting professoriate in the US, Canada, and other countries. As of 2016, US accounting programs averaged 7.9 faculty per program, versus 11.9 faculty for Canadian schools and 10.3 faculty for schools outside of the US and Canada. 78.2% of US faculty are tenure-track (or tenured), versus 84.0% of faculty in Canadian schools and 92.6% of faculty outside of the US and Canada. As of 2016, only 73.7% of individuals who obtain their degrees in Canada stay in Canada as university faculty vs. 90.9% of individuals obtaining US degrees staying in the US and 88.0% for faculty outside of either country. We examine how these proportions have shifted over time, from 1980 to 2016, and we break out our data into tenure-track vs. non-tenure track faculty. Finally, we examine the time needed to move from assistant rank to associate rank (i.e., the time to obtain tenure) and the time needed to move from associate to full professor, broken out by country of education and country of employment.

We examine a number of characteristics of the academic accounting career. On average, an assistant professor is promoted to associate rank after 6.46 years as an assistant, and 5.62 years at her current school. An assistant professor moves just under 1 times before promotion to associate. An associate professor is promoted to full in 7.14 years, after being at her current school for 9.27 years (including years spent as an assistant). Faculty that move from a tenure-track rank to non-tenure-track do so after 6.73 years in a tenure-track rank. Faculty starting at assistant rank stay at their current school for an average of 7.79 years; faculty starting at associate rank stay for 9.61 years, faculty starting at full professor rank stay for 8.28 years. Faculty starting at a non-tenure-track rank stay for 6.11 years. For career length, faculty retiring as assistants have a career length of 19.36 years; faculty retiring as associates have a career length of 21.72 years, and faulty retiring as full have a career length of 23.00 years. We also examine faculty mobility, by year, from 1976 to 2016, and the proportion of faculty promoted from assistant to associate and from associate to full.

We revisit whether the academic accounting profession is in decline. We use data gathered from Hasselback directories of accounting faculty from 1974 to 2016 and confirm prior results indicating a decrease in the number of assistant accounting professors from 1992 to 2002. However, the decrease does not appear to be as drastic as prior work suggests. Further, accounting faculty counts (including assistant professors) increased from 2002 to 2016. Accounting faculty salaries have also increased, suggesting that demand for accounting professors is increasing faster than supply, and also suggesting that there are significant opportunities for growth in the profession. These results suggest that actions and economic factors to slow and reverse the decline in the academic accounting profession have been largely successful. While future challenges remain, the academic accounting profession is no longer in decline.

Background Pulmonary nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) disease is a chronic progressive lung disease caused by environmental mycobacteria. Although epidemiological data indicate a potential genetic predisposition to NTM disease, the nature of this remains unclear. The present study aimed to identify host genes associated with susceptibility to Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC), the most common NTM pathogen. Methods We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in Japanese patients with pulmonary MAC and healthy controls, followed by genotyping of candidate SNPs in another group of patients and controls. For verification in European populations, we performed imputation to estimate genotypes of a candidate SNP from exome sequencing data. Findings The GWAS discovery set included 475 pulmonary MAC patients and 417 healthy subjects. After quality control filtering of genotyped variants, 622,723 autosomal variants were analysed. Both GWAS and replication analysis of 591 pulmonary MAC patients and 718 controls identified strongest association with chromosome 16p21, and particularly with rs109592 (p = 1.60E-13, odds ratio = 0.54). This SNP is located in an intronic region of the calcineurin like EF-hand protein 2 (CHP2) gene, and expression quantitative trait locus analysis showed association with lung CHP2 expression. Further, patient radiological findings showed that this SNP was associated with the nodular bronchiectasis disease subtype. This SNP is also significantly associated in European populations (p = 5.08E-06, odds ratio = 0.23). Interpretation These findings identify CHP2 as a candidate gene for further investigation of the pathogenesis of pulmonary MAC disease. Funding: JSPS KAKENHI, AMED, Keio Gijuku Academic Development Funds, NIH. Declaration of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. Ethical Approval: This study was reviewed and approved by the research ethics committees of the Keio University School of Medicine (2012-0336), the Graduate School of Medicine, the University of Tokyo (G3579), and other collaborating institutions (UMIN000021692). Regarding European cohort, the subjects were enrolled in studies under National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Institutional Review Board-approved protocol (93-I-0119). All adult subjects provided written informed consent and all the experiments were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations.

Success in publishing accounting research often requires success in multiple coauthoring relationships. Further, the number of coauthored papers in accounting (as well as most other fields of research) has steadily increased. Given the importance and popularity of coauthoring, our paper provides comprehensive advice to accounting researchers on how to manage a coauthoring relationship. A good coauthor establishes clear roles and expectations before a project begins and keeps commitments. Communication throughout the project is essential as coauthors confront difficulties and setbacks. We conclude by discussing several situations that coauthors may confront, and provide recommendations.

Success in publishing accounting research often requires success in multiple co-authoring relationships. Further, the number of co-authored papers in accounting (as well as most other fields of research) has steadily increased. Given the importance and popularity of co-authoring, our paper provides comprehensive advice to accounting researchers on how to manage the coauthoring relationship. A good coauthor establishes clear roles and expectations before a project begins, and keeps commitments. Communication throughout the project is essential as coauthors confront difficulties and setbacks. We conclude by discussing several situations that coauthors may confront, and provide recommendations.

Prior work has found high levels of concentration in the top academic accounting journals, leading some to suggest that these journals are dominated by a small set of elite schools. However, little evidence exists on changes in journal concentration over time, and evidence that does exist does not extend into recent years. We examine concentration trends in the top six accounting journals (AOS, JAE, JAR, RAST, CAR, and TAR) from 1960 to 2011. Our results show (1) an overall trend towards increasing article publications, (2) an overall trend towards decreasing concentration, (3) some evidence of increasing separation between journals based on the top schools each journal draws from (i.e., a top 20 school for one journal is becoming less likely to appear as a top 20 school for a different journal), and (4) an overall trend towards proportionally more non-US schools appearing in top journals. Our conclusions are similar whether we use authors’ affiliation school (where they worked at the time of publication) or degree-school (where they obtained their PhD). Our results ultimately suggest that opportunities for publication in top journals have improved for academic accounting researchers.

SYNOPSIS: In response to concerns over the viability of the academic discipline of accounting, we investigate trends in accounting research by examining papers published in six top accounting journals from 1960 to 2007. We use citations made by accounting papers as a proxy for their antecedent ideas and examine trends in citations, topics, and methodologies, in aggregate and by journal. Our results suggest that the growing body of accounting research draws increasingly from both finance and economics. Financial accounting topics and archival methodologies are becoming more dominant over time relative to other topics and methodologies, although these trends vary by journal. Though most concerns we discuss are recent, we find that the situation today is the result of trends set in motion decades ago with an explicit decision by influential researchers to move the discipline from a normative perspective to a positive perspective. Given its current state, accounting research may be broadly characterized as research into the effect of economic events on the process of summarizing, analyzing, verifying, and reporting standardized financial information, and on the effects of reported information on economic events.

The purpose of this paper is to provide advice to accounting doctoral students and new accounting Ph.D.s on managing the review process. We also hope that our advice and suggestions will assist more experienced accounting faculty in their research endeavors. We offer suggestions from the point of view of researchers at various stages in their career. We also interview a variety of current and former journal editors and provide their suggestions and insights. We first provide suggestions to help position the article so as to receive a more helpful review. We then discuss strategies for responding to the editorial process and provide specific advice for handling various editorial decisions including a rejection, a reject-and-resubmit, a revise-and-resubmit, and an acceptance. We build upon prior research by providing a summary of advice for each type of editorial decision and by providing advice and suggestions from editors and associate editors at a wide range of accounting journals.

We offer this paper as a primer for accounting doctoral students and new faculty on how to discuss a paper. We believe that this topic can serve to “jump start” the engagement of students and junior faculty in developing and delivering quality discussions. We begin by emphasizing the importance and benefits of being a good discussant to both the profession and the discussant. We then outline the discussion process and provide detailed suggestions on points to consider in each phase of this process: (1) volunteering to discuss, (2) receiving the discussion assignment, (3) preparing the discussion, (4) presenting the discussion, and (5) following up with the authors after the discussion. Next, we examine data that highlight the need for additional discussant volunteers at conferences. Finally, we present possible innovations to foster high-quality discussions. This paper formalizes the ideal process typically learned through years of mentoring and conference experience.

This paper examines whether firms with market values less than book values continue to exist because management does not want to utilize the adaptation option. If managers have the option to adapt assets (either internally or externally via selling the firm) to other uses when the expected net present value from current earnings is less than liquidation values, then a book-to market (BTM) ratio greater than one should not be observed. However, a sample from 1992 to 2009 indicates 35,575 continuous firm-month observations where the BTM ratio is above one. I specifically investigate whether the relation between entrenchment techniques, market discipline, changes in management, and undervaluation signaling is correlated with firms continuing with an BTM greater than one. Results are consistent with the entrenchment techniques, market discipline, and changing management hyp theses, but not with signaling. This paper extends the research on the adaptation option and provides an explicit link between firm value and corporate governance.

From an agency perspective, leverage may have a positive effect on firm performance by limiting managers’ ability to allocate resources to unproductive uses, as well as increasing pressure on them to perform well. Consequently, we might expect leverage to have a positive impact on acquisition performance. However, the increased risks associated with higher leverage, combined with the other risks inherent in an acquisition, could also cause managers to take actions to reduce risk even if doing so is contrary to value maximization. High debt levels might also limit managerial discretion over how resources are allocated during the acquisition process, which can have a negative impact on performance. We investigate the effect of leverage on post-acquisition stock performance and find that post-acquisition performance is decreasing in leverage brought by the target firm and in additional leverage taken on to execute the acquisition. This negative performance is clustered among acquirers who are already financially constrained. Our results are robust to various returns measurement methodologies and to the inclusion of several controls known to predict future returns. Our results also represent viable investment strategies, and suggest that the market underestimates difficulties that arise from acquisition-related increases in leverage.

This paper investigates whether future performance suffers when a firm deviates from an estimated optimal cash level. Results show that one year ahead RNOA and stock returns are decreasing in the level of deviation from an estimated optimal for both firms holding insufficient cash and firms holding excess cash. Investment strategies based on estimated insufficient and excess cash produce positive abnormal returns. Integrating our insufficient/excess cash strategies with an accruals-based strategy indicates that these strategies are complimentary for firms with insufficient cash but not for firms with high excess cash; the accruals anomaly does not hold for firms with high excess cash.

We investigate 400 firms that publicly advertise a desire to be acquired ("take-me-over" or TMO firms) from 1990 to 2006. Over this period the TMO "wave" lags about one year behind the acquisition wave. Most TMO firms show evidence of high debt levels as well as fundamental underperformance relative to industry peers. The TMO announcement significantly increases the odds of receiving a subsequent takeover offer. On average, TMO firms enjoy positive abnormal returns over the five days surrounding their announcement; however, average abnormal returns over the year following their announcement are significantly negative, suggesting that the TMO announcement signals bad news that is not fully anticipated by the market.

Event studies continue to be popular in the management literature. Most management researchers use event studies with a short window, and assume that the market's initial reaction reflects the economic impact of the event in an unbiased manner. This assumption is based on the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH): that security prices at any time fully reflect available information. This assumption likely holds in many settings, but we argue that when the information revealed to the market is complex or otherwise difficult to interpret, the initial market response may be biased or incomplete. In these settings, results from short-window event studies may not completely capture the economic impact of the event. We briefly review prior work on this issue, drawing from finance and accounting as well as from management research, and provide an example to support our argument using a large sample of horizontal acquisitions.

This paper investigates whether an acquirer’s pre-announcement cash level can predict post-acquisition returns. Harford (1999, Journal of Finance, 54, 1969–1997) shows that some cash-rich acquirers have lower announcement period returns than other acquirers, suggesting the market partially anticipates poor future performance. This paper shows that the acquirer’s cash level is also strongly and negatively predictive of post-acquisition returns, indicating that the announcement response is incomplete. Post-acquisition return on net operating assets (RNOA) is significantly decreasing in acquirer cash, suggesting that the market responds to subsequent poor operating performance as it is reported. Overall, these results are consistent with the market’s inattention to a less prominent accounting signal (acquirer cash) but attentiveness to a more prominent accounting signal (RNOA), as proposed by Hirshleifer and Teoh (2003, Journal of Accounting Economics, 36, 337–386).

This study compares four broadly available industry classification schemes in a variety of applications common to capital market research. Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes have been available since 1939 but are being replaced by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes. The Global Industry Classifications Standard (GICS)SM system, jointly developed by Standard & Poor's and Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI), is popular among financial practitioners, whereas the Fama and French [1997] algorithm is used primarily by academics. Our results show that GICS classifications are significantly better at explaining stock return comovements, as well as cross-sectional variations in valuation multiples, forecasted and realized growth rates, research and development expenditures, and various key financial ratios. The GICS advantage is consistent from year to year and is most pronounced among large firms. The other three methods differ little from each other in most applications.