Back to search

FINANSMARK-Finansmarkedet

Analytical Research in Financial Accounting Workshop 2020

Awarded: NOK 31,000

The ARFA workshop is an annual event hosted each year at another European university by one of the members of the ARFA group. The members are leading analytical researchers in the field of financial accounting and auditing from Central Europe which have published in top accounting journals (e.g., The Accounting Review; Management Science; Accounting, Organizations and Society; Contemporary Accounting Research; Review of Accounting Studies; ...). On March 12-13, 2020, the ARFA workshop took place at BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo. Among the participants were approximately 50% tenured faculty members and 50% PhD students. The topics presented and discussed at the ARFA workshops are highly important for a comprehensive understanding of the functioning of financial markets (the central objective of financial accounting is to provide the actors on financial markets with decision-useful information; the role of auditing is to assure the reliability of this information). At this year?s workshop, there were two presentations on the effects of auditor strictness and regulatory reforms on the audit market structure; one presentation on the influence of auditor overconfidence on financial reporting quality; one presentation on how managers? accountability affects investment decisions; one presentation on the interdependence between CEO compensation and firm performance; and one presentation on how vertical (supply chain) integration affects disclosure decisions. In addition to these detailed presentation, five doctoral students briefly presented their research projects.

The goals of the ARFA workshop are: Providing a platform for analytical accounting researchers to exchange ideas which are important for a comprehensive understanding of the functioning of financial markets; training PhD students interested in analytical financial accounting; and workshopping research papers to get them ready for submissions. Even though the number of participants decreased from 35 registered participants to 16 due to the upcoming Corona constraints, the workshop fully achieved its goals. The small group allowed for intense and fruitful discussions; the PhD students got very detailed and helpful feedback; and those presenters with well-developed projects got valuable comments on how to increase the impact of their research. Hosting the ARFA workshop at BI showed the participants from abroad that Norway has a well-developed research infrastructure. If the word spreads, this might attract young analytical researchers interested in topics related to financial markets.

The ARFA workshop is an annual event hosted each year at another European university by one of the members of the ARFA group. The members are leading analytical researchers in the field of financial accounting and auditing from Central Europe which have published in top accounting journals (e.g., The Accounting Review; Management Science; Accounting, Organizations and Society; Contemporary Accounting Research; Review of Accounting Studies; ...). In March 2020, the ARFA workshop will take place at BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo. The topics presented and discussed at the ARFA workshop are highly important for a comprehensive understanding of the functioning of financial markets. The central objective of financial accounting is to provide the actors on financial markets with decision-useful information; the role of auditing is to assure the reliability of this information. As mixed empirical observations are quite common in accounting research, the methodical focus on analytical research at the ARFA workshop is noteworthy. Because it is difficult for empirical researchers to differentiate between correlations and causal effects, developing theory is extremely important to get an understanding of the partially contradictory findings in empirical research on financial markets. Without a profound theory, there is no way to interpret empirical observations on current financial market issues credibly. Examples of topics presented and discussed at the ARFA workshop in previous years are: (1) accounting anomalies and financial market efficiency; (2) the relation of accounting standards, information risk, and the cost of capital; (3) the role of financial reporting in corporate political strategy and its effect on corporate valuation; (4) the effect of voluntary vs. mandatory disclosure on investors' decisions; and (5) the effects of certain audit market regulations on audit quality.

Funding scheme:

FINANSMARK-Finansmarkedet