The 2023 Yuji Ijiri Lecture on Foundations of Accounting
Presented by Stephen A. Zeff, Keith Anderson Professor of Accounting
The Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University has created a permanent repository for Dr. Zeff's contributions to our understanding of the historical evolution of financial reporting standards and regulations in the U.S. and globally, benefitting future generations of accounting scholars, students and practitioners.
In the first video series, Dr. Zeff summarizes, in his own incomparable style, his decades of research on the evolution of the regulation and standard-setting process for financial reporting in the U.S. from the 1930s to the early 2020s. In the second video series, he takes a global perspective and shares his deep insights on the evolution of the International Accounting Standards Committee into the International Accounting Standards Boards and the challenges it faced along the way.
Visit the Stephen A. Zeff Digital LibraryStephen A. Zeff holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Colorado, and M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan. He has received honorary doctorates from universities in Finland, Canada and Spain. He was the Editor of The Accounting Review in 1978-83 and was President of the American Accounting Association (AAA) in 1985-86. In 1988, he received the AAA's Outstanding Accounting Educator Award, and in 1999 the AAA's International Accounting Section named him the recipient of its Outstanding International Accounting Educator Award. In August 2017, he received the AAA's Lifetime Service Award.
From 1961 to 1978, he was on the faculty at Tulane University. He has taught at Rice University since 1978, and he has lectured in 59 countries.
In 1973 and 2001, Zeff received the Hourglass Award from the Academy of Accounting Historians, becoming one of the few two-time recipients of the award. In 2008, the Academy gave him the Thomas J. Burns Biographical Research Award. In 2002, he was inducted as the 70th member of the Accounting Hall of Fame of The Ohio State University. In 2003, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland made him an ICAS Honorary Research Fellow. In 2009, the European Accounting Association gave him the inaugural Anthony G. Hopwood Award for Academic Leadership. In 2009, CPA Australia and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales made him an honorary member. In August 2011, he gave the Presidential Scholar Address at the AAA's annual meeting. In 2011, the International Federation of Accountants gave him its inaugural IFAC International Gold Service Award, and in 2014 he was inducted as a corresponding academic in the Royal Academy of Doctors (today the Royal European Academy of Doctors), in Barcelona, Spain.
Zeff is author or editor of 32 books and has written more than 100 articles. He serves on the editorial board of fifteen research journals edited in nine countries. He was book review editor of The International Journal of Accounting from 1997 to 2003 and was book review editor of The Accounting Review from 2006 to 2015. He has been a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, University of Chicago, Harvard Business School, Northwestern University, and the University of Texas at Austin, and at universities in Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. He served on the advisory council to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and he was a public member of the planning committee of the AICPA's Auditing Standards Board. From 1981 to 2009, he was a member of the executive committee/board of the European Accounting Association. From 1991 to 2019, he was the lone US member of the academic panel of the UK's Accounting Standards Board and then of the UK's Financial Reporting Council, and from 1991 to 2002 he served as International Research Adviser to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.
At Rice University, Zeff has been an Associate of Sid W. Richardson College (1979-96), Director of the Managerial Studies Program (1980-99), Speaker of Faculty Council (1989-90), and Co-Chair of the Faculty and Shared Governance Task Force (2004-05).
CLICK HERE to view the PowerPoint slides from Stephen Zeff's 2023 lecture.
CLICK HERE to read the paper, Tracing Intellectual Origins in Accounting
2023 Yuji Ijiri lecture recording
Lecturer: Stephen A. Zeff
Title: Tracing Intellectual Origins in Accounting