Costello Research SEC/PCAOB

Managers’ attempts to distract investors from bad news have serious implications for market efficiency.

Taxing “book” income may result in worse information for shareholders and creditors.

Auditors with less common first names are more likely to deviate from auditing norms. But is their individualism an asset or a liability?

One accounting standard to rule them all might be a less desirable state of affairs than the ‘managed divergence’ that currently exists between U.S.-GAAP and IFRS.

Artificial intelligence can perform peer firm selection—a key task for investors—at least as accurately as well-established alternative algorithms and human experts, according to research by Costello profs Long Chen and Yi Cao.

The SEC’s unique treatment of companies that opt into public reporting shows that lighter-touch regulation can sometimes be just as effective. Associate professor of accounting Bret Johnson’s recent paper looks at how the SEC handles the added responsibility of reviewing voluntary filings.

Mason accounting professor, David Koo, goes back through history to trace how financial reporting requirements affect investors’ long- vs. short-term thinking.

A Mason professor unpacks the complex, nuanced impact of the “revolving door” between industry and regulators in the accounting world.

Research by Mason Accounting Professor Bret Johnson, a former SEC staff accountant and academic fellow, shows how seemingly mundane intra-agency policies can have unintended effects that benefit Wall Street over Main Street.

Bret Johnson, assistant professor of accounting at Mason, recently co-authored a paper in Management Science finding that SEC comment letters are leaking out among investors close to the company concerned, who then use it to their advantage. Technically, such information-sharing violates Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD), which prohibits companies from sharing secrets with network partners such as institutional investors and analysts.