Sarah Louise Zechman () is the Tisone Memorial Fellow Professor at the

Leeds School of Business The Leeds School of Business is a college of the University of Colorado Boulder in the United States, established 1906. As of April 2022, the school reports an enrollment of over 3800 undergraduate students. In 2001, the college was named for the ...

, University of Colorado Boulder.

Education and career

Zechman earned a BSBA in accounting in 1998 from

Washington University Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) is a private research university in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1853 by a group of civic leaders and named for George Washington, the university spans 355 acres across its Danforth ...

in St. Louis, Missouri. She then worked at

KPMG KPMG is a multinational professional services network, based in London, United Kingdom. As one of the Big Four accounting firms, along with Ernst & Young (EY), Deloitte, and PwC. KPMG is a network of firms in 145 countries with 275,288 emplo ...

until 2003 when she went to the

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania The Wharton School ( ) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia. Established in 1881 through a donation from Joseph Wharton, a co-founder of Bethlehem Steel, the Wharton ...

where she earned her Ph.D. in 2008. From 2008 until 2015 she was at the

University of Chicago Booth School of Business The University of Chicago Booth School of Business (branded as Chicago Booth) is the graduate business school of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1898, Chicago Booth is the second-oldest ...

. In 2015 she joined the faculty of the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, where she was promoted to professor in 2018. As of 2022 she is the Tisone Memorial Fellow Professor.

Research

Zechman studies how firms use disclosure and financial reporting to communicate with financial markets and other external users such as lenders, customers, and regulators about important topics including past firm performance, future expectations, and risks. Her work studies the interplay between mandatory disclosures in financial statements and voluntary disclosures made by managers to reveal or hide information from the market. With Catherine Schrand she has shown how accounting fraud emerges full bloom from small initial misstatements by managers who are overconfident of their firms' prospects. With Jonathan Rogers and Douglas Skinner, Zechman has studied the role of media in affecting stock prices and in exacerbating or leveling insider trading advantages in comparison with the average investor. Their paper "Run Edgar Run" exposed an unintentional advantage that the

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...

was giving large-paying subscribers by giving them access to insider trading information by a matter of seconds before the general market, leading to a trading advantage for those paying subscribers of 28 basis points over an 81 second period. After becoming aware of this research, the Chair and Ranking Member of the US Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs formally requested the SEC to investigate its practices for making the information public. The SEC conducted an internal investigation and subsequently changed its procedures to eliminate the trading advantage. Zechman has also studied the employment market for ex-CEOs of publicly traded companies.

Selected publications

* * * *

Awards and honros

Zechman received the Best Paper Award from the

American Accounting Association The American Accounting Association (AAA) promotes accounting education, research and practice. The Association mission is to further the discipline and profession of accounting through education, research and service. The organization is the larg ...

's Financial Accounting and Reporting Section in 2015 for her paper ''Executive Overconfidence and the Slippery Slope to Financial Misreporting'' and was awarded again in 2020 for her paper ''Run EDGAR Run:SEC dissemination in a high frequency world''.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Zechman, Sarah Living people Washington University in St. Louis alumni Wharton School alumni Accounting academics University of Colorado Boulder faculty University of Chicago Booth School of Business faculty Year of birth missing (living people)