Stephen A. Zeff
Keith Anderson Professor of Accounting
Mailing address:
Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business
Rice University - MS 531
P. O. Box 2932
Houston, TX 77252-2932
Office: 231 McNair Hall
Tel: (713) 348 6066
Fax: (713) 348 6296
e-mail: sazeff@rice.edu
Stephen A. Zeff holds B.S. and M.S.
degrees from the University of Colorado, and M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the
University of Michigan. He has received honorary doctorates from universities
in Finland, Canada and Spain. He was the Editor of The Accounting Review in
1978-83 and was President of the American Accounting Association (AAA) in
1985-86. In 1988, he received the AAA's Outstanding Accounting Educator Award,
and in 1999 the AAA's International Accounting Section named him the recipient
of its Outstanding International Accounting Educator Award. In August 2017, he
received the AAA's Lifetime Service Award.
From 1961 to 1978, he was on the faculty at Tulane University. He has taught at Rice University since 1978, and he has lectured in 59 countries.
In 1973 and 2001, Zeff received the Hourglass Award from the Academy of Accounting Historians, becoming one of the few two-time recipients of the award. In 2008, the Academy gave him the Thomas J. Burns Biographical Research Award. In 2002, he was inducted as the 70th member of the Accounting Hall of Fame of The Ohio State University. In 2003, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland made him an ICAS Honorary Research Fellow. In 2009, the European Accounting Association gave him the inaugural Anthony G. Hopwood Award for Academic Leadership. In 2009, CPA Australia and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales made him an honorary member. In August 2011, he gave the Presidential Scholar Address at the AAA's annual meeting. In 2011, the International Federation of Accountants gave him its inaugural IFAC International Gold Service Award, and in 2014 he was inducted as a corresponding academic in the Royal Academy of Doctors (today the Royal European Academy of Doctors), in Barcelona, Spain.
Zeff is author or editor of 32 books and has written more than 100 articles. He serves on the editorial board of fifteen research journals edited in nine countries. He was book review editor of The International Journal of Accounting from 1997 to 2003 and was book review editor of The Accounting Review from 2006 to 2015. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, University of Chicago, Harvard Business School, Northwestern University, and the University of Texas at Austin, and at universities in Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. He served on the advisory council to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and he was a public member of the planning committee of the AICPA's Auditing Standards Board. From 1981 to 2009, he was a member of the executive committee/board of the European Accounting Association. From 1991 to 2019, he was the lone US member of the academic panel of the UK's Accounting Standards Board and then of the UK's Financial Reporting Council, and from 1991 to 2002 he served as International Research Adviser to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.
At Rice University, Zeff has been
an Associate of Sid W. Richardson College (1979-96), Director of the Managerial
Studies Program (1980-99), Speaker of Faculty Council (1989-90), and Co-Chair
of the Faculty and Shared Governance Task Force (2004-05).
Selected Recent Publications:
"The Evolution of the Conceptual Framework for Business Enterprises in the United States," The Accounting Historians Journal, December 1999.
"John B. Canning: A View of His Academic Career," Abacus, February 2000.
Henry Rand Hatfield: Humanist, Scholar, and Accounting Educator (Stamford, CT: JAI Press Inc./Elsevier, 2000).
"Mathews, Gynther and Chambers: Three Pioneering Australian Theorists," Accounting and Business Research, Summer 2001, with Geoff Whittington.
"The Work of the Special Committee on Research Program," The Accounting Historians Journal, December 2001.
"Retired Audit Firm Partners on Boards: Independence Considerations," Director's Monthly, February 2002, with Dan M. Guy.
"'Political' Lobbying on Proposed Standards: A Challenge to the IASB," Accounting Horizons, March 2002.
"Du Pont's Early Policy on the Rotation of Audit Firms," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, January/February 2003.
"U.S. GAAP Confronts the IASB: Roles of the SEC and the European Commission," North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation, Summer 2003.
"'The Apotheosis of Holding Company Accounting: Unilever's Financial Reporting Innovations from the 1920s to the 1940s," Accounting, Business & Financial History, July 2003, with Kees Camfferman.
"How the U.S. Accounting Profession Got Where It Is Today," Accounting Horizons, September and December 2003. (Part I | Part II).
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional Standards," The CPA Journal, January and February 2005.
"Political Lobbying on
Accounting Standards - National and International Experience," chapter in
Nobes and Parker, Comparative International Accounting (London: Prentice
Hall, 9th edition, 2006) - revised for the 10th edition
published in 2008, for the 11th edition published in 2010, for the
12th edition published in 2012, for the 13th edition
published in 2016, and for the 14th edition published in 2020.
"The Primacy of 'Present
Fairly'
in the Auditor's
Report," Accounting Perspectives,
Vol. 6, No. 1 (2007).
Financial Reporting and Global Capital Markets: A History of the International Accounting Standards Committee, 1973-2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), with Kees Camfferman.
"The SEC Preempts the
Accounting Principles Board in 1965: The Classification of the Deferred Tax
Credit Relating to Installment Sales, " The Accounting Historians Journal, June 2007.
"The SEC Rules Historical Cost Accounting: 1934 to the 1970s,"
Accounting and Business Research,
International Accounting Policy Forum Issue 2007.
"Some Obstacles to Global Financial Reporting Comparability and Convergence at a High Level of Quality," The British Accounting Review, December 2007.
"Auditors' Affirmations of Company Compliance with IFRS: An Exploratory International Study," Accounting Perspectives, Vol. 4, No. 4 (2008), with Christopher Nobes.
"IFRS Developments in
the USA and EU, and Some Implications for Australia," Australian
Accounting Review, December 2008.
"The
Contribution of the Harvard Business School to Management Control, 1908-1980,"
Journal of Management Accounting Research, 2008 special issue.
(editor) Principles Before Standards: The ICAEW's 'N Series' of Recommendations on Accounting Principles 1942-1969 (London: ICAEW Financial Reporting Faculty, 2009).
"The Ontario Securities Commission on Accounting and Auditing from the 1960s to 2008 - Part 1: 1960s to 1985," Accounting Perspectives, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2010), with Vaughan S. Radcliffe (pdf available on request).
"The Ontario Securities Commission on Accounting and Auditing from the 1960s to 2008 - Part 2: The First Four Chief Accountants, 1986 -1996," Accounting Perspectives, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2010), with Vaughan S. Radcliffe (pdf available on request).
"Has Australia (or Any Other Jurisdiction) 'Adopted' IFRS?" Australian Accounting Review, June 2010, with Christopher Nobes.
Insights from Accounting History: Selected Writings of Stephen Zeff (London: Routledge, 2010).
Accounting Education and the Profession in New Zealand: Profiles of the Pioneering Academics and the Early University Accounting Departments 1900-1970 (Wellington: New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants, 2010), with Donald G. Trow.
"Accounting for Initial Franchise Fee Revenue: When a Journal Article in 1970 Constituted GAAP in the Eyes of the SEC," Research in Accounting Regulation, Vol. 24, No. 1, 2012.
Major Contributors to the British Accountancy Profession: A Biographical Sourcebook (Edinburgh: The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, 2012), with Robert H. Parker and Malcolm Anderson.
"The Evolution of the IASC into the IASB, and the Challenges it Faces," The Accounting Review, May 2012.
"The Objectives of Financial Reporting: A Historical Survey and Analysis," Accounting and Business Research, International Accounting Policy Forum, Vol. 43, No. 4 (pdf available on request).
"Some Methodological Deficiencies in Empirical Research Articles in Accounting," Accounting Horizons, September 2014, with Thomas R. Dyckman.
"Accounting and Auditing Activities of the Ontario Securities Commission, 1960s to 2008 - Part 3: The Fifth Chief Accountant, 1996 - 2008," Accounting Perspectives, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Winter 2014), with Vaughan Radcliffe and Sally Gunz (pdf available on request).
Aiming for Global Accounting Standards: The International Accounting Standards Board, 2001-2011 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), with Kees Camfferman.
"The Wheat Study on Establishment of Accounting Principles (1971-72): A Historical Study," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, March-April 2015.
"Funds Statements: The Accounting Principles Board was Twice behind the Curve," The Accounting Historians Journal, December 2015.
"Accounting Research: Past, Present and Future," Abacus, December 2015, with Thomas R. Dyckman.
"The Trueblood Study Group on the Objectives of Financial Statements (1971-73): A Historical Study" Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, March-April 2016.
(editor) Memorial Articles for 20th Century American Accounting Leaders (New York: Routledge, 2016).
"Accounting Textbooks as Change Agents: Finney's Intermediate and Finney and Miller's Intermediate from 1934 to 1958," The Accounting Historians Journal, June 2016.
"Have Canada, Japan or Switzerland Adopted IFRS?" Australian Accounting Review, September 2016, with Christopher Nobes.
"Lawrence Revsine: Influential Teacher and Author," Accounting Horizons, December 2016, with Robert P. Magee.
"The Influence of Price Waterhouse & Co. on the CAP, the APB, and in the Early Years of the FASB," The Accounting Historians Journal, December 2016.
"The
Challenge of Setting Standards for a Worldwide Constituency: Research
Implications from the IASB's Early History," The
European Accounting Review, May 2018 with Kees
Camfferman.
"The Omnipresent Influence of the SEC in the Work of the Accounting Principles Board, 1959 to 1973," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, May-June 2018.
"An Introduction to Corporate Accounting Standards: Detecting Paton's and Littleton's Influences," Accounting Historians Journal, June 2018.
"A Historical Study of the First 30 Years of Accounting Horizons," Accounting Historians Journal, June 2018, with Thomas R. Dyckman.
"The Early Years of the Financial Accounting Foundation and the Financial Accounting Standards Board, 1972-1980: The 'Special Relationship' with the AICPA," Journal of Financial Reporting, Fall 2018.
"A Personal View of the Evolution of the Accounting Professoriate," Accounting Perspectives, vol. 18, no. 3 (2019). (pdf available upon request)
"Accounting and Business Research: The First 50 Years, 1970-2019," Accounting and Business Research, June 2020, with Thomas R. Dyckman.
Celebrating One Hundred Years [of] Accounting and Commercial Law at Victoria University of Wellington (1912-2011) and Beyond (Victoria University of Wellington, 2020), with Carolyn Fowler and Carolyn Cordery.
"Evolution of U.S. Regulation and the Standard-Setting Process for Financial Reporting: 1930s to the Present," Foundations and Trends in Accounting, vol. 15, issue 3 (2021).
"The IAPC's International Auditing Guidelines and its Controversial IAG 13 on the Auditor's Report," Accounting and Business Research, vol. 52. No. 1 (2022).
"Organization and Development of Arthur Andersen & Co.'s Public Review Board - The Minow Years, 1974-1983," with Phil D. Wedemeyer; forthcoming in Accounting Horizons.
"IFRS Adoption in the United
States: An Analysis of the Role of the SEC's Chairs," with Kirstin Becker,
Holger Daske and Christoph Pelger;
forthcoming in the Journal of Accounting
and Public Policy.
Research in Progress:
"Voluntary and Mandatory Reporting: A Continuum," with Terence E. Cooke and Kevin P. McMeeking.
"Tracing Intellectual Origins in Accounting."
"SEC Commissioners' Views on IFRS Adoption for U.S. Issuers," with Kirstin Becker, Holger Daske and Christoph Pelger.
Last revised on April 26, 2023.