Bushman’s PhD Seminar Fall 2025

I expect you to come to class prepared to participate in class discussions having carefully read and thought about the assigned papers.  All students will be expected to present one or two papers. Papers marked in green are available for student presentations. A typical presentation will run 20-30 minutes, depending on the level of discussion.  Here are some to questions consider in preparing your presentation (and non-presenters in preparing for class discussions): 

• What is the research question and why is it important? 

• What is the theoretical framework, if any, that is used to motivate the research question and hypotheses?  

• What are the main concerns, limitations, and weaknesses? How does the paper’s empirical methods attempt to mitigate these? 

• How well is the research design tied to the research question? How accurately do the empirical proxies capture the underlying economic constructs of interest? To what extent is the research design capable of distinguishing between alternative hypotheses? 

• What are the main results? How do the authors interpret them? How do you interpret them? 

While I don't want you to over-invest in preparing slides, the ability to powerfully organize a set of ideas in PowerPoint form will be crucial to your long run success.  You should also use these presentations to develop your presentation skills and to begin discovering your natural presentation style.  It is your life, so I will leave it up to you to decide how aggressively to pursue foundational knowledge. The final exam for this course is your thesis paper, your long run research impact and your academic career.        

Session Details

Optional Reading

• Korinek, Anton. 2025. “AI Agents for Economic Research: August 2025 Update to ‘Generative AI for Economic Research: Use Cases and Implications for Economists'. Journal of Economic Literature 61(4)

Session 1 Wednesday 10/29/25 12pm to 3pm

Manager fixed effects & Implications of Intangible Capital Mismeasurement (Bushman's slides: Loan Officers; Star Firms)

Papers for Class Discussion 

• Marianne Bertrand, Antoinette Schoar, 2003, Managing with Style: The Effect of Managers on Firm Policies. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 118, 4

  • • C. Edward Fee, Charles J. Hadlock, Joshua R. Pierce, 2013. Managers with and without Style: Evidence Using Exogenous Variation. The Review of Financial Studies, Vol. 26, 3. Useful to read this paper in conjunction with Bertrand and Schoar.

• Bushman, Robert M. and Gao, Janet and Martin, Xiumin and Pacelli, Joseph, 2021. The Influence of Loan Officers on Loan Contract Design and Performance. JAE, SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3433063

  • • Bigger Data + Tinier Results = The Wrong Direction, 2025. John Hand.  It is interesting to compare what these papers are doing versus John's discussion of incremental R2

• Ayyagari, Meghana and Demirgüç-Kunt, Asli and Maksimovic, Vojislav, 2024. The Rise of Star Firms: Intangible Capital and Competition. The Review of Financial Studies, Volume 37, Issue 3

  • • The algorithm used to estimate intangible capital is taken from this paper: Peters, Ryan H. and Taylor, Lucian A., 2017. Intangible Capital and the Investment-q Relation. Journal of Financial Economics.

Related Literature

• Crouzet, Nicolas, Janice C. Eberly, Andrea L. Eisfeldt, and Dimitris Papanikolaou. 2022. "The Economics of Intangible Capital." Journal of Economic Perspectives 36 (3): 29–52.

• Hanlon, Michelle, Kelvin Yeung, and Luo Zuo. 2022. "Behavioral economics of accounting: A review of archival research on individual decision makers." Contemporary Accounting Research (Wiley Online Library) 39: 1150–1214.

• Fernandez, S., M. Stocklin, L. Terrier, and S. Kim (2021). Using available signals on linkedin for personality assessment. Journal of Research in Personality 93, 104122.

Session 2 Wednesday 11/05/25 12pm to 3pm

Estimating intangibles using accounting data

Papers for Class Discussion (PowerPoint Slides)

• Ewens, Peters, and Wang, 2024. Measuring Intangible Capital with Market Prices. Management Science 71(1):407-427. 

• Aneel Iqbal, Shiva Rajgopal, Anup Srivastava, Rong Zhao (2025) A Better Estimate of Internally Generated Intangible Capital. Management Science 71(1):731-752. 

• Kepler, John and McClure, Charles and Stewart, Christopher R., 2024. Competition Enforcement and Accounting for Intangible Capital. Journal of Finance, Forthcoming

• Rajgopal, Shivaram and Basirian, Elnaz and Iqbal, Aneel and Srivastava, Anup, 2025. Attributes of Earnings Adjusted for Intangibles Capitalization.

Related Literature

•  Li, Wendy and Hall, Bronwyn H. 2020. Depreciation of Business R&D Capital. Rev. Income Wealth 66(1):161–180.

• Enache, Luminita, and Anup Srivastava. "Should intangible investments be reported separately or commingled with operating expenses? New evidence." Management Science 64, no. 7 (2018): 3446-3468.

• Anup Srivastava, Shivaram Rajgopal, 2022. The case for reinventing financial reporting in the 21st century. Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Volume 34, Issue 4.

• Penman, Stephen H., Empirical Research on Capitalizing Intangible Assets is Logically Incoherent (August 01, 2024). Columbia Business School Research Paper No. 4959045 

• Huseyin Gulen, Dongmei Li, Ryan H. Peters, Morad Zekhnini (2024) Intangible Capital in Factor Models. Management Science 71(2):1756-1778. 

Session 3 Wednesday 11/12/25 12pm to 3pm

Economic Implications of Intangible Capital (Bushman's slides: Kepler et al.)

Papers for Class Discussion (PowerPoint Slides)

• Kepler, McClure, Stewart, 2025. Quantifying Intangible Capital Shares and their Implications for Productivity and Growth: Evidence from Corporate Consolidations

• He, B., Mostrom, L. I., and Sufi, A. (2024). Investing in customer capital. NBER Working 25 Paper.

• He, Huan (Bianca), 2024. Financing Intangibles.

• Beneish, Messod Daniel and Harvey, Campbell R. and Tseng, Ayung and Vorst, Patrick, 2022. Unpatented Innovation and Merger Synergies (December 11, 2020). Review of Accounting Studies. Volume 27, pages 706–744

Related Literature

• Shleifer, Andrei, Pedro Bordalo, Nicola Gennaioli, Giovanni Burro, and Gad Nacamulli, 2025. Ads As Cues.

• Brynjolfsson, E., Rock, D., and Syverson, C. (2021). The productivity J-curve: How intangibles complement general purpose technologies. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 13(1):333–372.

• De Loecker, J. and Syverson, C. (2021). An industrial organization perspective on productivity. In Ho, K., Hortascu, A., and Lizzeri, A., editors, Handbook of Industrial Organization, volume 4, pages 141–223. 

• Baker, Scott R. and Baugh, Brian and Sammon, Marco, 2023. Customer Churn and Intangible Capital. Journal of Political Economy Macroeconomics, Volume 1, Number 3. 

• Mostafa Monzur Hasan, Grantley Taylor, Grant Richardson (2021) Brand Capital and Stock Price Crash Risk. Management Science 68(10):7221-7247. 

• Bronnenberg, Bart J., Jean-Pierre Dubé, and Chad Syverson. 2022. "Marketing Investment and Intangible Brand Capital." Journal of Economic Perspectives 36 (3): 53–74. 

• Belo, F., Gala, V. D., Salomao, J., and Vitorino, M. A. (2022). Decomposing firm value. Journal of Financial Economics, 143(2):619–639.

Session 4 Wednesday 11/19/25 12pm to 3pm

Data as an Intangible Asset & Organizational Capital (Bushman's slides: Veldkamp; Eisfeldt; Minority lending; Managerial capital)

Background Reading

• Lev, Radhakrishnan & Zhang, 2009. Organizational Capital. Abacus. Volume 45, Issue3

Papers for class discussion  

• Veldkamp, Laura, 2023 Valuing Data as an Asset. Review of Finance vol. 27 , no. 5: 1545-1562 (An accessible overview of the economics of data valuation)

• Eisfeldt, Andrea L. and Papanikolaou, Dimitris, 2013. Organization Capital and the Cross-Section of Expected Returns. Journal of Finance, Volume 68, Issue 4

• I will do short renditions of two of my papers on organizational capital:

  •  An, Byeongchan and Kleymenova, Anya V. and Bushman, Robert M. and Tomy, Rimmy, 2024. Bank Supervision and Organizational Capital: The Case of Minority Lending. Journal of Accounting Research Volume 62, Issue 2 

  • Arif, Bushman Donovan and Gopalan, 2025. Managerial capital and soft information: implications for performance and CEO turnover.

• Chawla, Muskan and Friedman, Henry L. and Kim-Gina, Jessica, 2025. Organizational Capital, Brand Capital, and Information Asymmetry.

• Cai, Wei and Prat, Andrea and Yu, Jiehang, 2025. Measuring Organizational Capital. 

Related Literature

Organizational Capital

• Andrea Prat & Wouter Dessein, 2022. Organizational Capital, Corporate Leadership, and Firm Dynamics. Journal of Political Economy

• Bloom and John Van Reenen, 2007. Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 122, Issue 4

• Demerjian, Peter R. and Lev, Baruch Itamar and McVay, Sarah E., 2012. Quantifying Managerial Ability: A New Measure and Validity Tests.

• Edmans, Alex, 2011. Does the Stock Market Fully Value Intangibles? Employee Satisfaction and Equity Prices. Journal of Financial Economics 101(3), 621-640.

• Demerjian, P. R., B. Lev, M. F. Lewis, and S. E. McVay. 2013. Managerial ability and earnings quality. The Accounting Review 88 (2): 463–98.

Data as an Intangible Asset 

• Gao, Xingchao and Liu, Junhao and Lu, Hai, 2025. Accounting for Data Assets. 

• Farboodi, Maryam, Dhruv Singal, Laura Veldkamp , and Venky Venkateswaran “Valuing Financial Data.” The Review of Financial Studies vol. 38, no. 3 (March 01, 2025): 938-980

• Anat R. Admati and Paul Pfleiderer, 1990. Direct and Indirect Sale of Information. Econometrica, Vol. 58, No. 4, pp. 901-928

• Abis, Simona and Veldkamp, Laura, 2024. The Changing Economics of Knowledge Production. The Review of Financial Studies, volume 37, issue 1.

• Veldkamp, Laura, and Cindy Chung. 2024. "Data and the Aggregate Economy." Journal of Economic Literature 62 (2): 458–84. 

• Farboodi, Maryam, Adrien Matray, Laura Veldkamp , and Venky Venkateswaran, 2022. “Where Has All the Data Gone?” Review of Financial Studies, vol. 35 , no. 7: 3101-3138. 

• AI and Finance, 2024. Andrea L. Eisfeldt & Gregor Schubert

• Bian, Bo and Huang, Qiushi and Li, Ye and Tang, Huan, 2024. Data as a Networked Asset. WP

• Bian, Bo and Ma, Xinchen and Tang, Huan, 2023. The Supply and Demand for Data Privacy: Evidence from Mobile Apps 

Session 5 Wednesday 12/3/25 12pm to 3pm

Pivot to Structural Estimation: From model to data

Background reading

• Bertomeu, Jeremy and Liang, Ying and Marinovic, Ivan, A Primer on Structural Estimation in Accounting Research (January 24, 2023). Read the introduction. 

Papers for Class Discussion

• Gigler, Kanodia, Sapra and Venugopalan. 2009. “Accounting Conservatism and the Efficiency of Debt Contracts.” Journal of Accounting Research. (Read only to page 776, the discussion on Type-1 and Type-2 errors)

• Griffin, Thomas and Nini, Gregory and Smith, David Carl, 2024. Losing Control? The Two-Decade Decline in Loan Covenant Violations. Journal of Finance, Forthcoming. 

• Luneva, Irina, 2025. Explaining Debt Covenant Amendments: A Structural Approach. Jacobs Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research Paper.

Session 6 Wednesday 12/10/25 12pm to 3pm

Disclosure Models and Structural Estimation

Background reading

• Bertomeu, Jeremy and Liang, Ying and Marinovic, Ivan, A Primer on Structural Estimation in Accounting Research (January 24, 2023). Read Section 2, A Simplified Approach to Structural Estimation. 

Papers for Class Discussion

• Verrecchia, Ro, 1983. Discretionary disclosure. Journal of Accounting and Economics, Volume 5, Pages 179-194

• Woon-Oh Jung and Young K. Kwon, 1988. Disclosure When the Market Is Unsure of Information Endowment of Managers. Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Spring, 1988), pp. 146-153 

• Jeremy Bertomeu, Anne Beyer and Daniel J. Taylor (2016), “From Casual to Causal Inference in Accounting Research: The Need for Theoretical Foundations”, Foundations and Trends in Accounting: Vol. 10, No. 2-4, 262–313.

Related Literature

• Friedman, Henry L., Fixing the Proprietary Cost Assumption in Discretionary Disclosure Models (August 01, 2024).

• Bertomeu, Jeremy, Statistical versus Economic Significance in Accounting: A Reality Check, 2023. 

• "Structural Econometric Modeling: Rationales and Examples from Industrial Organization" 2007, is a chapter written by Peter C. Reiss and Frank A. Wolak

• Gow, Ian D. and Larcker, David F. and Reiss, Peter C., Causal Inference in Accounting Research (May 2016). Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 54, No. 2, 2016.

• Duarte, Jefferson, Edwin Hu, and Lance Young. "A comparison of some structural models of private information arrival." Journal of Financial Economics 135, no. 3 (2020): 795-815.

• Andrews, Gentzkow and Shapiro (2020) “Transparency in Structural Research". Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, 38:4, 711-722

• Andrews, Gentzkow and Shapiro (2020) “On the Informativeness of Descriptive Statistics for Structural Estimates”. Econometrica, Vol. 88, No. 6 (November, 2020), 2231–2258

Session 7 Wednesday 12/17/25 12pm to 3pm 

Applications of Structural Estimation

Background reading

• Bertomeu, Jeremy and Liang, Ying and Marinovic, Ivan, A Primer on Structural Estimation in Accounting Research (January 24, 2023). Read Section 3, Econometric Methods in Structural Estimation. 

Papers for Class Discussion.

• Bertomeu, Jeremy, Paul Ma, and Ivan Marinovic (2020) ‘How often do managers withhold information?’ The Accounting Review 95(4), 73–102 

• Cheynel, Edwige and Liu, Michelle, A Simple Structural Estimator of Disclosure Costs (January 8, 2019). Forthcoming at Review of Accounting Studies.   

• Bertomeu, Jeremy and Marinovic, Ivan and Terry, Stephen and Varas, Felipe, 2022. The Dynamics of Concealment. Journal of Financial Economics Volume 143, Issue 1, 227-246  

Related Literature

• Beyer, Anne and Guttman, Ilan and Marinovic, Ivan, Earnings Management and Earnings Quality: Theory and Evidence. 2019. The Accounting Review. The Accounting Review 94 (4): 77–101.

• Financial Reporting Quality and Myopic Investments: Theory and Evidence, 2023. Heng (Griffin) Geng, Cheng Zhang, Frank Zhou, The Accounting Review 98(6), 223-251

• Fraud Power Laws, 2024. Edwige Cheynel, Davide Cianciaruso and Frank Zhou. Journal of Accounting Research 62(3), 833-876

• Bertomeu, Jeremy and Jung, Jaehoon and Marinovic, Ivan, 2022. Moral Hazard and the Value of Information: A Structural Approach. Working paper

• How uncertain is the market about managers' reporting objectives? Evidence from structural estimation, J. Bertomeu, E. Cheynel, E. Li and Y. Liang 

• Luneva, Irina, What Does the Market Know? 2024. 

• Charles G. McClure, How Costly is Tax Avoidance? Evidence from Structural Estimation. 2023. The Accounting Review (2023) 98 (6): 353–380.