36 research idea notes tagged “accounting”. Read them as Markdown, JSON or an Atom feed.
Key and critical audit matters appear on only 9 recent papers, although auditors of thousands of listed firms now describe the riskiest parts of each audit in their reports. Do these paragraphs say anything firm-specific after a few years, and does anyone react to them?
Process mining and robotic process automation appear on only 25 recent papers, mostly in AI and operations research, with 3 in accounting. Event logs from enterprise systems record every step of purchasing, invoicing and payment. Can auditors test whole populations of transactions instead of samples, and what do they find?
Non-GAAP earnings appear on only 6 recent papers. Technology firms report profits that exclude stock-based pay and, increasingly, the costs of AI investment, while AI start-ups report "adjusted" margins of their own design. Which adjustments mislead, and do investors see through them?
Annual reports, 10-K filings, narrative disclosure and readability appear on 99 recent papers in the finance and accounting journals, but only 9 of them carry a generative-AI, language-model or AI-generated keyword. If language models now draft the management discussion, do the text measures researchers rely on still mean anything?
Papers in the last 30 days — narrative disclosure: 2 · readability: 1
Whistleblowing appears on 16 recent papers across the tracked journals, mostly on whether employees speak up. Reward programmes at the SEC and now the EU and other regulators pay tipsters a share of penalties. Do rewards bring forward the discovery of fraud, and do they change what happens inside firms?
Papers in the last 30 days — corporate fraud: 2
Earnings calls are a staple of finance and accounting research, read almost always as transcripts. In the AI journals, multimodal fusion is one of the biggest topics. Do voice and video carry information about firms that the words miss?
Papers in the last 30 days — earnings conference calls: 5 · earnings call transcripts: 1
Related-party transactions appear on 23 recent papers and tunneling on 17, almost all in finance journals and mostly about Chinese business groups. As rules on these transactions tighten and disclosure moves to machine-readable formats, can tunneling be detected at scale, and did the rules reduce it?
Papers in the last 30 days — related-party transactions: 1
Tax incentives appear on 47 recent papers and R&D investment on 267, but R&D tax incentives on only 5, and 26 of 75 incentive papers touch innovation. Governments spend heavily on R&D tax relief. How much of the reported increase in R&D is real research, and how much is ordinary spending relabeled?
Papers in the last 30 days — R&D tax incentives: 1 · tax incentives: 3
Retrieval-augmented generation appears on 165 recent papers, 171 of 178 such papers in AI journals, and only 12 touch finance, legal, tax, accounting, audit or compliance questions. Banks, tax advisers and auditors are deploying it over filings, rules and contracts. How often does it cite the right source, and what happens when the source changes?
Papers in the last 30 days — retrieval-augmented generation: 14
The gender pay gap appears on 55 recent papers, mostly in economics, while pay transparency appears on 2. The EU pay transparency directive takes effect in 2026, and several US states now require salary ranges in job postings. Does transparency narrow the gap, compress pay, or move it into bonuses?
Papers in the last 30 days — gender pay gap: 2
Narcissism, CEO characteristics and CEO personality appear on 42 recent papers, mostly in the management and accounting journals, with measures built from signatures, photos and pronoun counts. Language models can now score personality from thousands of hours of speech. Do the old measures and the new ones agree, and does personality predict decisions out of sample?
Management earnings forecasts appear on 11 recent papers in the accounting and finance journals. Firms withdrew guidance in the pandemic and again around the 2025 tariff shocks. What do investors and analysts do when guidance disappears, and does the practice recover?
Papers in the last 30 days — management earnings forecasts: 2
Knowledge graphs appear on 141 recent papers and neuro-symbolic AI on 14, almost all in AI journals; only 34 of 481 such papers concern accounting, tax, legal, regulatory, financial or audit uses. Compliance is a domain of explicit rules and entities, which language models alone handle badly. Do graphs and symbolic rules make them reliable enough for audits and tax?
Papers in the last 30 days — knowledge graphs: 9 · neuro-symbolic AI: 2
Insider trading appears on 40 recent papers in the finance and accounting journals, and 17 of 45 carry a regulation or enforcement keyword, but "trading plan" appears on one. Since 2023, US executives' pre-scheduled trading plans must have cooling-off periods and be disclosed. Did the plans stop being a cover for informed trades?
Papers in the last 30 days — insider trading: 2
Human-AI collaboration is rising in the management and AI journals, while audit quality remains a core accounting topic. Few papers connect them. When auditors work with AI tools, does audit quality improve, and who answers for the judgments the tools shape?
Papers in the last 30 days — audit quality: 3 · human-AI collaboration: 8
Greenwashing is one of the fastest-growing keywords in the finance journals, yet few papers measure it against emissions. Scored as the gap between what firms say about climate and what their emissions do, does greenwashing fool ESG raters, lenders or investors?
Papers in the last 30 days — greenwashing: 4 · ESG ratings: 9
Goodwill appears on 14 recent papers across the tracked journals, with 2 in the last quarter. After a decade of acquisitions at high prices, goodwill on corporate balance sheets is enormous, and standard setters have again debated bringing back amortization. When do firms impair, and does the market believe them?
Tax avoidance and profit shifting are steady topics across the finance, accounting and economics journals, but the 15% global minimum tax, in force in many countries since 2024, barely appears; only 3 of 103 recent papers carry a minimum-tax keyword. Does it end profit shifting, or move it to other margins?
Papers in the last 30 days — tax avoidance: 2
Accounting education is one of the fastest-growing keywords in the accounting journals, and a quarter of those papers now involve generative AI. Does an AI tutor help students learn accounting, or only finish the homework?
Papers in the last 30 days — accounting education: 2 · generative AI: 15
Loan loss provisions appear on 23 recent papers in the finance and accounting journals, IFRS 9 on 5 and CECL on 3. The expected-loss rules were designed after 2008 to make banks provision earlier. The 2022–2024 rate shock and the pandemic were their first real tests. Did provisions move earlier, or just more?
Papers in the last 30 days — loan loss provisions: 3 · CECL: 1
Information transparency and corporate disclosure are rising in the accounting journals, and language models now read filings for investors. Yet few disclosure papers mention language models or XBRL. Is disclosure written for machines changing what transparency means?
Papers in the last 30 days — information transparency: 7 · corporate disclosure: 14
Earnings management is a mainstay of the finance and accounting journals, still measured mostly with accrual regressions such as the modified Jones model. Only 4 of 156 recent papers on it carry a machine-learning or text keyword. Do learned models, including language models reading the filings, flag manipulation that accrual models miss?
Papers in the last 30 days — earnings management: 6 · accrual-based earnings management: 1
Cybersecurity appears on 159 recent papers, most of them in AI journals about detection; only 22 carry a disclosure, reporting or investor keyword, and "cybersecurity disclosure" on 6. Since 2023, US firms must report material cyber incidents within four business days. What do they report, and what do markets learn?
Papers in the last 30 days — data breaches: 1 · cybersecurity risks: 4
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive appears on 9 recent papers and double materiality on 3, while sustainability reporting as a whole appears on 57. The first reports under the directive were published in 2025, and the rules were then scaled back. What did the first wave disclose, and what did the rollback remove?
Papers in the last 30 days — sustainability reporting: 4
Climate risk disclosure appears on 19 recent papers, carbon disclosure on 10 and TCFD on 7; only 14 of 53 climate-disclosure papers carry a mandate, rule or regulation keyword. The US SEC rule was stayed, California's law survived, and the ISSB standards are being adopted by dozens of countries. Which regime changes what firms report, and what investors do with it?
Papers in the last 30 days — climate risk disclosure: 1
Executive compensation appears on 114 recent papers, yet only 14 of 144 pay papers carry a disclosure, pay-ratio, say-on-pay or transparency keyword. Firms in the US and UK now publish the ratio of CEO pay to median worker pay. Did it change CEO pay, worker pay or neither?
Papers in the last 30 days — executive compensation: 7
Carbon credits and offsetting appear on 22 recent papers, with 9 in the last quarter against about 4 per quarter before, but only 3 carry a quality, additionality, integrity or greenwashing keyword. After investigations found that many forest credits avoided no emissions, the market shrank and new integrity labels appeared. Do buyers now pay for quality?
Board composition is one of the fastest-growing keywords across the tracked journals, and board gender diversity is a large topic in finance, accounting and management. But only 7 of 135 such papers carry a quota, mandate or regulation keyword, just as the EU's quota directive reaches its target date. Do quotas change how boards decide, or only who sits on them?
Papers in the last 30 days — board gender diversity: 4
Tax compliance and enforcement appear on 118 recent papers, and 23 of them carry a digital, big-data or AI keyword, led by China's digitalized tax administration. Tax authorities now match invoices, bank data and platform records automatically. Which taxpayers change behaviour, and does automated enforcement crowd out voluntary compliance?
Papers in the last 30 days — tax enforcement: 1 · tax compliance: 4
Corporate transparency is a rising keyword in the management journals, while beneficial ownership barely appears in the archive. In November 2022 the EU Court of Justice struck down general public access to the registers of companies' beneficial owners. Did the return of anonymity bring back shell companies and opaque property purchases?
Papers in the last 30 days — corporate transparency: 1 · anti-money laundering: 1
The Big 4 auditors appear on 32 recent papers in the finance and accounting journals, but only 9 of 38 papers on the audit market carry a concentration, competition or fee keyword. Audit fees have risen sharply, and regulators worry about four firms auditing almost every large company. Does concentration raise fees, lower quality or both?
Papers in the last 30 days — Big 4 auditors: 2
Sustainability reporting appears on 57 recent papers, but assurance of those reports on far fewer: "ESG assurance" on 6, "external assurance" on 3, and the topic is rising. A global assurance standard took effect in 2026. Does assurance make reported emissions more accurate, and who should provide it?
Papers in the last 30 days — sustainability reporting: 4
Analyst attention is rising in the finance journals, and AI tools now summarize filings and earnings calls for anyone. Only 13 of 246 recent papers on analysts carry an AI keyword. Do analysts drop the small firms that machines now summarize, or use the time saved to dig deeper?
Papers in the last 30 days — analyst attention: 1
Artificial intelligence and stock price crash risk are both rising in the finance journals, and "AI washing" has appeared as a keyword. When the AI story in disclosures runs ahead of actual AI investment, does the stock carry more crash risk?
Papers in the last 30 days — AI washing: 1 · stock price crash risk: 6
Firms spend heavily on data, software and AI models, but much of that spending is expensed and barely shows on balance sheets. Intangible assets are a steady finance topic, yet only one of 57 recent papers on them carries an AI, data or software keyword. How large is the missing AI capital, and does it distort book-based measures?
Papers in the last 30 days — intangible assets: 3 · intangible capital: 2
Cryptocurrency and digital assets appear on 476 recent papers, but only 6 of them carry an accounting, fair-value, reporting, disclosure or audit keyword. Since 2025, US firms report crypto holdings at fair value through earnings, and some firms now hold Bitcoin as their main asset. What does fair value accounting do to earnings, and does it change who holds crypto?
Papers in the last 30 days — digital assets: 1