PhD
Accounting
Students in MIT Sloan’s Accounting research group are encouraged to transcend traditional accounting boundaries by integrating comprehensive knowledge of economics and finance into their studies on contemporary financial reporting, disclosure, and contractual issues. The group’s rigorous curriculum, which includes seminars in accounting and finance, equips students with the economic acumen akin to that of MIT Sloan’s Finance PhD candidates. Leveraging the expertise of distinguished faculty members like Michelle Hanlon, whose research focuses on taxation and its intersection with financial accounting, S.P. Kothari, known for his contributions to finance and accounting, and Andrew Sutherland, who explores regulatory impacts on audit markets, students engage with cutting-edge research that is highly relevant to academics, practitioners, and standard setters.
Research from Accounting Faculty
Why some organizations turn AI experiments into business value while others quietly fail
The biggest obstacle to organization-wide AI innovation is not the technology itself, but whether organizations support the hidden work employees perform to develop AI solutions at scale.
Beyond Capital: A Trust- and Culture-Based Regulatory Framework for the Next Banking Crisis
The abrupt demise of Credit Suisse shows that capital and liquidity buffers alone can't salvage an institution that has exhausted the market's reservoir of trust.
Generative AI as a tool for market research
Market research is essentially a prediction problem. MIT Sloan’s John Horton says organizations should consider using generative AI to simulate the effects of their decisions before they make them.
10 levers for shaping generative AI that improves worker performance
A report from the MIT Working Group on Generative AI & the Work of the Future identifies three principles and seven outcomes that ensure that jobs are better, not just faster, with AI.
Select Accounting Faculty
Full-Time Faculty
Paul Asquith
Gordon Y Billard Professor of Finance
Paul Asquith is the Gordon Y Billard Professor of Finance and a Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Asquith is a specialist in corporate finance and a media source for the field of corporate finance and control, including…
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John E. Core
Nanyang Technological University Professor of Accounting
John E. Core is the Nanyang Technological University Professor and a Professor of Accounting at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Core has broad research interests in executive compensation and executive stock and option incentives, corporate…
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Michelle Hanlon
Deputy Dean for Faculty and Research
Michelle Hanlon is the Howard W. Johnson Professor, a Professor of Accounting, and Deputy Dean for Faculty and Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management Hanlon’s primary teaching at Sloan is the Taxes and Business Strategy class. She has won…
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S.P. Kothari
Gordon Y Billard Professor of Accounting and Finance, Emeritus
S.P. Kothari is Gordon Y Billard Professor of Accounting and Finance at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Professor Kothari has senior executive experience in government, academia, and industry with expertise in strategic and policy issues,…
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Example PhD Thesis Topics
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Yuting Wang (2025)
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Gabriel Voelcker (2024)
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Rachel Yoon (2023)
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Samuel Anderson (2022)
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Brian Baik (2022)