Michael Minnis joined Chicago Booth in 2010 as Assistant Professor of Accounting. Minnis studies the role of accounting information in allocating investment efficiently by both management and capital providers, the use of financial reporting in mitigating information opacity issues of privately-held firms, and the interplay within management in the production and use of financial information. He particularly enjoys identifying unique data and methods to empirically examine issues in a novel way.
Prior to pursing his PhD, Minnis’ accountancy and CPA background allowed him to work in a variety of professional roles. He worked in corporate finance at Eli Lilly and Company, Inc. and later at Fitzgerald | Isaac, p.c. as a certified public accountant. Building on his knowledge and experience, Minnis went on to found Controller Associates LLC where he also served as President of the company. Controller Associates, LLC provided part-time controller and Chief Financial Officer services to small companies and non-profit organizations, as well as a variety of financial statement analysis and consulting services. He sold the firm to Milestone Advisors in 2006.
“Having worked with and studied companies ranging in size from large multi-nationals to start-up ventures, I have seen the usefulness and the power of the information conveyed in financial statements. I want students to be able to take full advantage of this information.”
Minnis received his PhD from the University of Michigan and his BS from the University of Illinois, where he graduated with Highest Honors. In addition to being awarded two fellowships, Minnis’ honors also include “Indy’s Best and Brightest, top accounting professional under the age of 40” and “Indiana CPA Society, 5 Under 35.”
Outside of research and teaching Minnis enjoys a variety of sports and spending time with his family.
Selected Publications
“The Value of Financial Statement Verification in Debt Financing: Evidence from Private U.S. Firms,” Journal of Accounting Research (May 2011).
REVISION: Knowledge, Compensation, and Firm Value: An Empirical Analysis of Firm Communication
Date Posted: Jan 03, 2013
Modern theories of the firm suggest that identifying the location of knowledge within an organization is the key to understanding the organization’s decision-making processes. We hypothesize that external communication patterns reveal the underlying knowledge dispersion within the management team. Using a large database of firm conference call transcripts, we find evidence to support our hypothesis. CEOs speak less in settings where they are unlikely to be fully informed and these CEOs also re
REVISION: A Measure of Competition Based on 10-K Filings
Date Posted: Oct 24, 2012
In this paper we develop a measure of competition based on management’s disclosures in their 10-K filing and find that firms’ rates of diminishing marginal returns on new and existing investment vary significantly with our measure. We show that these firm-level disclosures are related to existing industry-level measures of disclosure (e.g. Herfindahl index), but capture something distinctly new. In particular, we show that the measure is associated with the rates of diminishing marginal retu
REVISION: Disclosure Drifts in Investor Networks
Date Posted: Jun 05, 2011
This study develops a model of information diffusion in a setting where investors are linked in a social network. We develop a model in which a firm's disclosure initially reaches only a subset of the investor base. Examples include investor relations conferences and settings where finite attention and cognitive skills limit the set of investors who monitor the firm's disclosures. While investors can learn from prices in our model, we focus on how the initially uninformed investors receive the i
New: The Value of Verification in Debt Financing: Evidence from Private U.S. Firms
Date Posted: Feb 01, 2011
I examine how verification of financial statements influences debt pricing. I use a large proprietary database of privately-held U.S. firms, an important business sector in which the information environment is opaque and financial statement audits are not mandated. I find that audited firms have a significantly lower cost of debt and that lenders place more weight on audited financial information in setting the interest rate. Further, I provide evidence of a mechanism for this increased financia