The PCAOB is establishing a Center for Economic Analysis to advise the board on how economic theory, analysis, and tools can enhance the effectiveness of the board’s programs.
University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales will be the founding director of the center, which will promote and encourage economic research related to the role of the audit in capital formation and investor protection.
The center will host a 2014 conference on economic research related to the role of the audit in capital markets, and will call soon for research reports to be presented at the conference.
“The PCAOB is committed to advancing its investment in and attention to the use of economic analysis in its rulemaking,” PCAOB Chairman James Doty said in a news release Wednesday announcing the formation of the center. “The center will focus on fostering more economic research in auditing topics and building economic and other analytical tools for use in the PCAOB’s work to protect the investing public’s interest in high-quality auditing.”
Zingales will remain a professor and faculty fellow at the University of Chicago while overseeing the center. He also is a faculty research fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research fellow for the Center for Economic Policy Research, and a fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute.
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Ken Tysiac (
ktysiac@aicpa.org
) is a JofA senior editor.
