This doctoral seminar develops frameworks for conducting credible empirical research on contracting, governance, and financial reporting institutions, with particular emphasis on executive incentive compensation, corporate governance, debt contracting, and strategic interactions. The course emphasizes how to map theory to testable claims, research designs, identifying assumptions, measurement choices, and interpretation. Students will learn to evaluate and apply empirical tools commonly used in accounting research, including difference-in-differences, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, synthetic control, and sensitivity or bounds analyses, while also considering issues such as spillovers, construct validity, and measurement error.
3 units · GSB Letter Graded
This doctoral seminar develops frameworks for conducting credible empirical research on contracting, governance, and financial reporting institutions, with particular emphasis on executive incentive compensation, corporate governance, debt contracting, and strategic interactions. The course emphasizes how to map theory to testable claims, research designs, identifying assumptions, measurement choices, and interpretation. Students will learn to evaluate and apply empirical tools commonly used in accounting research, including difference-in-differences, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, synthetic control, and sensitivity or bounds analyses, while also considering issues such as spillovers, construct validity, and measurement error.
Offered in Autumn 2026 at Stanford University.