Stephen A. Zeff

Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Accounting

Spring 2010 No office hours, but available by appointment.

 

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, M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan, and an honorary doctorate in economics from the Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, in Finland. He was Editor of The Accounting Review in 1977-82 and was President of the American Accounting Association 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 International Accounting Educator Award. From 1961 to 1978, he was on the faculty at Tulane University. He has taught at Rice University since 1978. In the past 40 years, he has lectured in over 50 countries.

 

In 1973 and 2001, he received the Hourglass Award from the Academy of Accounting Historians, thus 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, at The Ohio State University. In 2003, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland made him an Honorary Research Fellow. In 2009, the European Accounting Association gave him the Anthony G. Hopwood Award for Academic Leadership. Also in 2009, CPA Australia and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales made him an honorary member.

 

He is author or editor of 25 books and has written more than 100 articles. He serves on the editorial board of more than 25 research journals edited in ten countries. He was book review editor of The International Journal of Accounting from 1997 to 2003 and is currently book review editor of The Accounting Review. 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. Since 1991, he has been a member of the academic panel of the UK’s Accounting Standards Board, and from 1991 to 2002 he served as International Research Adviser to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.

 

At Rice University, he 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:

 

Company Financial Reporting: A Historical and Comparative Study of the Dutch Regulatory Process (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1992), with Frans van der Wel and Kees Camfferman.

 

“The Contributions of Theodore Limperg Jr (1879-1961) to Dutch Accounting and Auditing” in Edwards (editor), Twentieth-Century Accounting Thinkers (London: Routledge, 1994), with Kees Camfferman.

 

“A Perspective on the US Public/Private-Sector Approach to Standard Setting and Financial Reporting,” Accounting Horizons, March 1995.

 

“A Study of Academic Research Journals in Accounting,” Accounting Horizons, September 1996.

 

Readings & Notes on Financial Accounting: Issues and Controversies (New York: Irwin/McGraw-Hill, fifth edition, 1997), with Bala G. Dharan.

 

“The Early Years of the Association of University Teachers of Accounting: 1947-1959,” The British Accounting Review, June 1997 (Special Issue).

 

“Playing the Congressional Card on Employee Stock Options: A Fearful Escalation in the Impact of Economic Consequences on Standard Setting” in Cooke and Nobes (editors), The Development of Accounting in an International Context: A Festschrift in Honour of R. H. Parker (London: Routledge, 1997).

 

“The IASC’s Core Standards: What Will the SEC Do?” The Journal of Financial Statement Analysis, Fall 1998.

 

“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., 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 & 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 9 in Nobes and Parker (editors), Comparative International Accounting (London: Prentice Hall, 9th edition, 2006) – revised for publication in the 10th edition in 2008.

 

“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.

 

“The Formation and Early Years of the Union Européenne des Experts Comptables Economiques et Financiers, 1951-1963,” with Kees Camfferman, Accounting, Business & Financial History, November 2009, with Kees Camfferman. 

 

(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.

 

Research and Publications in Progress:

  

“The Deliberations of the Trueblood Study on the Objectives of Financial Statements, 1971-73”

 

“A Continuum of Disclosure,” with Terence Cooke

 

“The Ontario Securities Commission on Accounting and Auditing from the 1960s to 2008 – Parts 2 and 3,” with Vaughan S. Radcliffe

 

Profiles of the Early New Zealand University Accounting Departments and the Pioneering Academics, with Donald G. Trow (in production with the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants/AFAANZ)

 

The ICAEW’s Recommendations on Accounting Principles, 1942-1969

 

Insights from Accounting History: Selected Writings of Stephen Zeff (in production with Routledge)

 

“Evolution of the UEC from 1963 to 1986,” with Kees Camfferman

 

 

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Recommended Reading:

 

 

Last revised on December 23, 2009.