Professor Katherine Schipper, Former FASB Member, Presents Paper at LSU
Katherine Schipper
February 20, 2008
BATON ROUGE - The LSU E. J. Ourso College of Business’ Department of Accounting today launched
the first in a series of planned research workshops by hosting Professor Katherine
Schipper of Duke University. Schipper led the event by presenting her coauthored work,
“Direct and Mediated Associations Among Earnings Quality, Information Asymmetry and
the Cost of Equity.”
Designed to bring together researchers from Louisiana regional universities, the workshop
included accounting professors and doctoral students from LSU, Louisiana Tech University,
Southeastern Louisiana University, Tulane University and Loyola University (New Orleans).
Also in attendance were faculty and doctoral students from the E. J. Ourso College’s
Department of Finance, college administrators and representatives from the accounting
and business advisory firm of Postlethwaite and Netterville.
Schipper, the Thomas F. Keller Professor of Accounting at Duke University’s Fuqua
School of Business, serves as an editor of the Review of Accounting Studies and recently
rejoined her institution’s faculty after serving as a member of the Financial Accounting
Standards Board from 2001 to 2006. She teamed with fellow faculty members Frank Ecker
and Per Olsson, as well as Neil Bhattacharya of Southern Methodist University, to
compose the paper presented at LSU.
“The theory presented by Professor Schipper uses path analysis to investigate the
direct and indirect links between three measures of earnings quality and the cost
of equity capital,” Department of Accounting Associate Professor Jacquelyn Sue Moffit
said. “Their investigation is motivated by analytical predictions that specify both
a direct link – precision of information – and an indirect link – distribution of
information – that is mediated by information asymmetry, but the analytical predictions
were unable to suggest which link would be more important.
“Professor Schipper’s research focused on providing empirical evidence on the nature
of the relationship between information risk and investors’ resource allocation decisions;
i.e., which is more important, the precision of information or equal access to information?
They suggest both a direct path from earnings quality to the cost of equity and an
indirect path that is mediated by information asymmetry, with the weight of the evidence
favoring the direct path as the more important.
Schipper, who has served as the editor of the Journal of Accounting Research, has
previously been honored as the American Accounting Association Educator of the Year
and served as the president of the AAA as well. In 2007, she became the first woman
to be inducted into the Accounting Hall of Fame, which has inducted just 81 members
since its inception.
The Department of Accounting’s next regional accounting workshop is scheduled for
this fall, with additional workshops planned in successive semesters. Future topics
include research in auditing and analyst forecasts.
For information about the E. J. Ourso College’s Department of Accounting, click here.
Angela McBride
LSU E. J. Ourso College of Business
225-578-7833