This article presents one university's approach to supplementing traditional doctoral research training with a two-semester teaching practicum. The practicum is designed to help students develop and hone pedagogical and other teaching skills, while gaining insight into academic career acumen. It consists of two, one-hour courses taken by students during each of the first two semesters of their doctoral program. In the first semester, weekly teaching seminars are accompanied by an apprenticeship activity in which the students attend classes of faculty mentors throughout the term, teaching one of those classes toward the end of the term. In the second semester, the doctoral students are mentored through their first whole-semester teaching experience, sharing issues from that experience and sharpening skills in the weekly seminar discussions. The article provides details of the practicum and implementation guidance intended to encourage other Ph.D. programs to embrace the general approach we describe, adapting the specifics to reflect the resources and aspirations of their programs.
Using 15,354 firm‐year observations from Chinese listed companies from 2003 to 2013, we examine the association between accounting firm ranks, disclosed by the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CICPA), and audit quality. The results show that clients audited by higher ranked accounting firms report lower discretionary accruals and are more likely to receive modified audit opinions. Additionally, accounting firm ranks are found to better capture audit quality after recent modifications by the CICPA to include nonrevenue metrics. Finally, we find that clients are more likely to replace downgraded accounting firms and pay higher audit fees when switching to a higher ranked firm. Our results suggest that accounting firm ranks capture audit quality, have economic implications, and would serve as an audit quality indicator. This study should be useful to global accounting regulators, practitioners, and academics concerned with auditor quality in China and who seek to develop audit quality indicators.
Prior literature suggests that manager ability influences several factors, including financial reporting quality, key to the bargaining power of an issuing firm during their initial public offering (IPO). However, we also know that high ability managers are better able to engage in and conceal opportunistic behavior which may dampen any positive effects their abilities have in the IPO process. Given the conflicting affect that managerial ability may have on financial reporting and firm performance in the IPO setting, we examine the impact of manager ability on prospectus earnings quality and IPO underpricing. We find that IPO firms with high ability managers tend to have better earnings quality and are less underpriced than firms with low ability managers. We also find preliminary evidence that equity ownership strengthens the relationship between manager ability and IPO underpricing. Our findings are consistent with the streams of literature suggesting that better managers produce higher quality earnings and raise more capital during the IPO to invest in future growth opportunities if they are closely monitored. These findings should be useful to issuing firms considering hiring high caliber managers, investors in evaluating IPO firms, and researchers in examining the influence of human capital on IPO underpricing.
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