What is Accounting Research?
As part of the Master of Accounting (MAcc) program at Ohio State, there are four required courses. One of these courses is called Accounting Policy and Research, and it is taught by Prof. Tzachi Zach. When I first heard the name of this course, I wasn’t too surprised that our Master’s program requires that students take a research class. However, I didn’t really know what to expect. What is accounting research anyway?
Prof. Zach started off the class by explaining to us the four primary topics of accounting research: financial accounting, managerial accounting, tax, and audit. Within each of these areas of interest, academic researchers use different tools to explore their research questions, such as accounting theories, surveys, and market data. In Prof. Zach’s class, we read and discuss accounting research papers about various market phenomena and corporate management behavior.
Right now, everyone in the MAcc program is working on Prof. Zach’s group project that’s due the last week of classes. We are tasked to conduct an event study in order to see how stock prices react to a particular trigger in the business world or in our everyday lives.
For example, my team is looking to see if stock prices of S&P 500 companies that are headquartered near NFL stadiums increase after the nearby team wins the Super Bowl. We’re looking at all of the past 49 Super Bowl games, so there’s a lot of data to collect!
We’re really curious to see if there is any difference in stock prices between the companies we’re looking at and stock markets indexes in the two days following each game. I’m looking forward to hearing all of the class presentations to see what events other groups studied. Hopefully that gives a bit of insight into what accounting research is all about!