Mark G. Maffett studies international financial reporting, capital markets, institutional investors, liquidity, and valuation with a focus on the economic effects of financial reporting transparency in international capital markets. His papers have been accepted for publication in the Journal of Accounting & Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research and Foundations and Trends in Accounting.
Recently, Mark received the AAA/Grant Thornton Doctoral Dissertation Award for students conducting innovative research in accounting and the State Farm Companies Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Award. In 2010, he was awarded one of ten Deloitte Foundation Doctoral Fellowships and was selected as the AAA’s representative at the European Accounting Association Doctoral Consortium in Istanbul, Turkey.
Outside of academia, Maffett’s professional experience extends to Greer & Walker, LLP, in Charlotte, NC, where he was an associate and worked in auditing, assurance services, and financial consulting. During his time there he worked with firms in industries ranging from textiles to NASCAR and gained an appreciation for the value of knowledge of financial accounting principles for managers, investors, bankers and financial analysts. He hopes that students who take his course leave with a solid understanding of the concepts and methodologies utilized in financial accounting and the effect such methodologies have on financial reports used by managers and investors.
Maffett earned his Ph.D. in accounting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Additionally, he holds a M.A. in humanities from The University of Chicago, has dual degrees from Wake Forest University in accounting (M.S.A.) and in analytical finance (B.S.), and is also a licensed C.P.A.
Mark enjoys hanging out with his daughter Maya, running, watching college basketball and drinking bourbon.
Selected Publications
With Mark Lang, “Transparency and Liquidity Uncertainty in Crisis Periods,” Journal of Accounting and Economics (2011).
With Mark Lang, “Economic Effects of Transparency in International Equity Markets: A Review and Suggestions for Future Research,” Foundations and Trends in Accounting (2011).
With Mark Lang and Karl Lins, “Transparency, Liquidity and Valuation: International Evidence on When Transparency Matters Most,” Journal of Accounting Research (2012).
REVISION: Foreign Institutional Ownership and the Global Convergence of Financial Reporting Practices
Date Posted: May 03, 2013
This paper investigates whether institutional investors have significant influence on the convergence of financial reporting practices worldwide. Using the accounting comparability measure developed in De Franco et al. (2011) as a proxy for reporting convergence, we show that an interquartile shift in U.S. mutual fund ownership is associated with a 15.4% increase in emerging market firms’ comparability with their U.S. industry peers. To more directly identify this association, we adopt a chang
REVISION: Post-Listing Performance and Private Sector Regulation: The Experience of the AIM
Date Posted: Feb 24, 2013
We investigate the post-listing experience of companies raising capital on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM). The AIM is unique in that it is privately regulated and relies on Nominated Advisors (Nomads) who compete to bring new listings and provide ongoing regulatory oversight. We find that AIM firms significantly underperform firms on regulated exchanges in terms of post-listing returns and failure rates. The underperformance is similar to that of firms listing
REVISION: Financial Reporting Opacity and Informed Trading by International Institutional Investors
Date Posted: Sep 25, 2012
Using cross-country data on trading by international mutual funds, I find that firms with more opaque information environments, as captured by firm- and country-level measures of the availability of financial reporting information, experience more privately informed trading by institutional investors. The association between firm-level opacity and informed trading is most pronounced where country-level disclosure infrastructures are less developed and for those investors for whom the incentives
REVISION: Transparency and Liquidity Uncertainty in Crisis Periods
Date Posted: Dec 28, 2011
We document, for a global sample, that firms with greater transparency (based on accounting standards, auditor choice, earnings management, analyst following and forecast accuracy) experience less liquidity volatility, fewer extreme illiquidity events and lower correlations between firm-level liquidity and both market liquidity and market returns. Results are robust to numerous sensitivity analyses, including controls for endogeneity and propensity matching. Results are particularly pronounced d
REVISION: Transparency, Liquidity, and Valuation: International Evidence on When Transparency Matters Most
Date Posted: Dec 28, 2011
We examine the relation between firm-level transparency, stock market liquidity, and valuation across a variety of international settings. We document lower transaction costs and greater liquidity (as measured by lower bid-ask spreads and fewer zero-return days) for firms with greater transparency (as measured by less evidence of earnings management, better accounting standards, higher quality auditors, more analyst following and more accurate analyst forecasts). The relation between transparenc
REVISION: Economic Effects of Transparency in International Equity Markets: A Review and Suggestions for Futur
Date Posted: Jul 02, 2011
In this paper we discuss the existing accounting literature on the real effects of financial reporting transparency in international equity markets, present aspects of an international setting that make it a fruitful environment for investigating these effects and suggest directions for future research.
Update: Earnings Comovement and Accounting Comparability: The Effects of Mandatory IFRS Adoption
Date Posted: Mar 21, 2011
We examine changes in cross-country financial statement comparability around mandatory IFRS adoption and the effects of these changes on firms’ information environments, as captured by analyst properties and bid-ask spreads. First, we show that cross-country earnings comovement is negatively associated with favorable properties of the firm-level information environment. In contrast, we show that cross-country accounting comparability is positively associated with favorable properties of the info
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REVISION: Listing Choices and Self-Regulation: The Experience of the AIM
Date Posted: Mar 15, 2011
We compare companies listing on the London AIM to regulated exchanges in the US and UK. The AIM is unique in that it is privately-regulated and relies on Nominated Advisors to provide oversight rather than traditional regulators. We find that AIM firms perform poorly on a variety of dimensions. Their post-listing returns significantly underperform stocks on other exchanges. Liquidity is low and there is evidence of substantial information asymmetry. Results are similar across subsets of firms in