Spring 2027

Accounting Theory: Reporting Incentives and Consequences

This course examines the theoretical foundations of corporate financial reporting and applies finance and economic theories to explain major accounting standard development.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 4

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2023: 3.82 GPA, 96.4% A/AB (n=55 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.88 GPA, 97.3% A/AB (n=75 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.84 GPA, 97.7% A/AB (n=44 letter grades).

What you’ll be able to do

  • Explain the conceptual frameworks underlying accounting standard setting in the US and internationally.

  • Recognize how political considerations and economic consequences within a market economy affect accounting standard setting.

  • Explain the role of information asymmetry, adverse selection and moral hazard in capital markets in addressing accounting and disclosure issues.

  • Demonstrate how to assess accounting policy decisions in terms of underlying finance and economic theories such as efficient capital markets, decision theory, prospect theory, game theory, and signaling.

  • Recognize how managers’ motivations, especially with respect to compensation and other contracts could explain management reactions to proposed accounting policies, as well as practices such as earnings management.

  • Apply the conceptual framework, as well as relevant finance and economic theories and academic research, in a detailed explanation of the development of a major accounting standard.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

Graduate/professional standing and (ACCT I S 302 or 702); or declared in graduate Business Exchange program

    • take all
    • declared in graduate Business Exchange program
    take one
ACCTIS 770

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • Any of
    • All of
    • declared in graduate Business Exchange program

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections.

Meeting source records
Download part 1

Student experience

the class

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2023: 3.82 GPA, 96.4% A/AB (n=55 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.88 GPA, 97.3% A/AB (n=75 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.84 GPA, 97.7% A/AB (n=44 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

No workload feedback recorded.

Topics

  • Theoretical foundations of corporate financial reporting
  • Application of conceptual framework and finance/economic theories to understand development of major accounting standards
  • Political considerations and economic consequences affecting accounting standard setting
  • Information asymmetry, adverse selection, and moral hazard in capital markets related to accounting and disclosure
  • Manager motivations, compensation, contracts, and earnings management

Skills

  • Explain conceptual frameworks for accounting standard setting in the US and internationally.
  • Recognize how political considerations and economic consequences affect accounting standard setting.
  • Explain the role of information asymmetry, adverse selection, and moral hazard in capital markets for accounting and disclosure issues.
  • Assess accounting policy decisions using finance and economic theories like efficient capital markets, decision theory, prospect theory, game theory, and signaling.
  • Recognize how manager motivations regarding compensation and contracts explain reactions to accounting policies and earnings management.
  • Apply conceptual frameworks and finance/economic theories to explain the development of major accounting standards.

Grades

Latest available · Fall 2025— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Fall 2025

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Fall 2025 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1316 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

Download part 1
Selected offering source records

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
[]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews

No records available.

Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Download part 1
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "2cd71d18ec3b8a53ea372bd754b056d811c7a962881ed3de6318260a830c123a",
  "requirements_status": "needs_review",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}