Productivity in “Top‐Ten” Academic Accounting Journals by Researchers at Canadian Universities*

We examine the research productivity of academic accountants at Canadian universities for the 11‐year period 1990‐2000. Our analysis is based on the “top‐ten” ranked refereed journals in accounting, auditing, and taxation, as documented by Brown and Huefner (1994). We first provide an overview of the importance of publishing in highly ranked accounting journals for individual academics, departments, and business faculties. We then provide details of the proportion of articles published in each of these journals by academics from Canadian universities; the type of research published in each journal (auditing, financial accounting, managerial accounting, and taxation); and details of editorial board service. Our results indicate that even at the most productive Canadian university (in terms of “top‐ten” publications), faculty members publish (on average) approximately one article every seven years. Six Canadian universities have faculty members with, on average, more than one article in “top‐ten” journals every 10 years. We also provide results of analyses that rank each Canadian university, after controlling for the relative quality of each journal, using impact factors published by the Social Science Citation Index. In addition, statistics are provided with regard to the 15 most productive researchers, in terms of “top‐ten” publications, in the 11‐year period. Finally, in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Academic Accounting Association, we examine the productivity of academic accountants at Canadian universities over the past 25 years by combining our results with those reported by Richardson and Williams (1990).     

Testing a Measurement Model of Financial Capability Among Youth in Ghana

Youth may benefit from having enhanced financial knowledge and skills and access to financial services to help them navigate transitions to adulthood, though reliable and valid measures of youth financial capability to help assess financial education and inclusion intervention outcomes are lacking. Using survey responses from 5,451 youth ages 12–18 in Ghana, we used exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to assess 18 survey items concerning youth financial behavior and understanding and attitudes concerning financial services. A 12‐item, group invariant scale (α = .72) with three latent factors was retained in a well‐fitting model that may help practitioners assess financial education and inclusion outcomes. We found that six items were poor indicators of youth financial capability, possibly because these items measure other constructs like numeracy, or because these items were not sufficiently assessed for developmental and cultural validity using qualitative methods like cognitive interviewing.     

Biased Auctioneers

We construct a neural network algorithm that generates price predictions for art at auction, relying on both visual and nonvisual object characteristics. We find that higher automated valuations relative to auction house presale estimates are associated with substantially higher price-to-estimate ratios and lower buy-in rates, pointing to estimates' informational inefficiency. The relative contribution of machine learning is higher for artists with less dispersed and lower average prices. Furthermore, we show that auctioneers' prediction errors are persistent both at the artist and at the auction house level, and hence directly predictable themselves using information on past errors.