The American Institute of CPAs recognized three academics for exemplary teaching and research contributions during the annual American Accounting Association meeting, held this week in San Francisco.
Stephen Moehrle, a professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, is the recipient of the 2019 AICPA Distinguished Achievement in Accounting Education Award. Panos Patatoukas and Yaniv Konchitchki, professors at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, received the 2019 Notable Contributions to Accounting Literature Award.
The Distinguished Achievement in Accounting Education Award honors full-time college accounting educators who have made notable contributions to teaching and have national prominence in the accounting profession.
“Throughout his career, Prof. Moehrle has exhibited a commitment to educating students and practitioners on best practices and standards for accounting,” Steve Matzke, director of faculty university initiatives at the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, said in a statement. “He brings an engaging style to the classroom that encourages students, while at the same time he generates scholarly articles and practical guides to advance the thinking around and practice of the profession.”
The Notable Contributions to Accounting Literature Award is given annuallyi to authors of research papers that have “withstood a rigorous process of screening and scrutiny based on certain criteria, such as originality, breadth of potential interest, soundness of methodology and potential impact on accounting education.”
Patatoukas and Konchitchki earned the award for their papers, “Accounting earnings and gross domestic product,” and “Taking the Pulse of the Real Economy Using Financial Statement Analysis: Implications for Macro Forecasting and Stock Valuation.” This is the second time Patatoukas had received the award; he previously earned it in 2017.
The pair evaluated aggregate accounting earnings from the 100 largest companies to determine how said data could forecast GDP and annual stock market returns. Their work concluded that financial statement analysis offers macroeconomic researchers and forecasters a tool for measuring the economy.
“These two papers offer insight into how one can estimate larger economic activity by evaluating the accounting earnings of the nation’s largest companies,” stated Matzke. “Their work provides new opportunities for economic forecasters to use the work of accountants to better predict Gross Domestic Product growth.”
For more on the awards, head the AICPA’s site here and the AAA’s site here.