Katherine Gunny

Education

Ph.D., University of California Berkeley, Haas School of Business, 2005
M.S., Agricultural and Resource Economics, 1998
B.S., Agricultural and Resource Economics, 1997

Regional and Thematic Interests

East Asia
Business and Economics

Profile

Katherine Gunny teaches Corporate Financial Reporting I to undergraduates and a doctoral seminar on archival empirical research in accounting to Ph.D. students. Her research focuses real earnings management and accounting regulations. Her research on real earnings management provides persuasive evidence that some firms appear to engage in real activities to influence the output of the accounting system (i.e. reported earnings). In contrast, earlier research was mainly concerned with earnings management through accounting decisions including accounting estimates and method choices. Her work also extends the real earnings management literature to the hospital nonprofit setting and considers the effect of managerial performance incentives. In terms of accounting regulations, Professor Gunny is currently exploring issues related to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) which is responsible for the regulation, registration, and inspection of external auditors and created by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The creation of the PCAOB represented an end to over fifty years of self-regulation in the U.S. auditing industry. Her work focuses on the effectiveness and informativeness of the PCAOB inspections process. Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., Professor Gunny worked as a research analyst at a litigation consulting firm and a marketing manager at an internet startup company in Palo Alto, California.