Creative Accounting and Financial Scandals

Description

Students will develop an intuition for the role different incentives play in shaping reporting decisions and become familiar with the most common accounting procedures that were used for fraud. The seminar is designed for third year bachelor students who have an interest in financial accounting and a solid prior knowledge in accounting. The goal of the seminar is to understand the incentives that are inherent to financial reporting decisions and the motivations of individuals that might lead to accounting fraud. In addition, we will discuss the role of auditors, the media, whistleblowers, and investors in uncovering accounting fraud. Within our discussion, we will first illustrate the incentives influencing corporate reporting choices based on the existing empirical academic literature. Second, we will build on case studies about prominent fraud cases to illustrate how accounting fraud worked in practice. Students will have to write a seminar paper about a theoretical topic or an accounting fraud case study that will be assigned in the first lecture. Furthermore, students will have to present their seminar paper within class. Assessment Information: Final exam: No