Haresh Sapra

Biography

Haresh Sapra is the Charles T. Horngren Professor of Accounting at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he has been on the faculty since 2000. He is a Senior Editor of the Journal of Accounting Research and a member of the Model Validation Council of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, a panel of academic experts that provides independent advice on the models the Federal Reserve uses in its bank stress tests.

Sapra studies the “real effects” of accounting measurement and disclosure. Standard setters often treat financial reporting as a passive record of what happened; his research shows that the choice of measurement and disclosure rules changes the very decisions being measured, from the loans banks make to the risks managers take. He is best known for his work on mark-to-market accounting and bank stability, accounting conservatism and debt contracting, and the interplay between accounting standards and prudential regulation. His recent research examines how expected-loss provisioning under CECL affects bank lending and regulation, and the costs and benefits of measuring greenhouse gas emissions.

His research has appeared in the Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Games and Economic Behavior, and has been featured in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Financial Times. He has lectured at the European Central Bank and delivered keynote addresses at academic conferences in Europe and Africa.

At Chicago Booth, Sapra teaches Financial Accounting in the Executive MBA Program, an MBA elective on Deal Structuring and Financial Reporting Implications, and a PhD course on the economic modeling of accounting issues. He has received the Hillel J. Einhorn Excellence in Teaching Award from Executive MBA graduating classes ten times and the Emory Williams Teaching Award five times. He has served on the dissertation committees of more than twenty PhD students, who have gone on to positions at institutions including Harvard Business School, Wharton, Columbia, Stanford, and MIT.

Sapra serves on the Committee of the Council of the University of Chicago’s University Senate for 2026–27 and previously served as Special Advisor to the Provost. He has held visiting professorships at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Imperial College London.

He holds a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Minnesota and BBA and MS degrees in accounting from the University of Houston. He is a CPA (inactive) and an avid marathoner who has completed all six Abbott World Marathon Majors.

Research Interests

Disclosure regulation; economic consequences of accounting measurement policies; corporate governance.

Academic Areas

• Accounting