General provisions

The course is offered to exchange students, to students of regular programmes as well as a separate course during the 3rd year.

The Course Description is established by the board of the Department of Business Studies by mandate of the Faculty of Social Sciences. The course plan is valid from 2006-09-01. The Course Description was last revised 2004-02-12.

Entry requirements

The following is applicable to Swedish students:

For level C:

Qualified to be registered is any student who has studied both A- and B-levels and who, at the time of registration, has obtained 20 points at A-level and 15 points at B-level.

For level D:

Qualified to be registered is any student who has studied both A-, B- and C-levels and who, at the time of registration, has obtained 20 points at A-level, 20 points at B-level and 15 points at C-level, including the degree project at C-level

Aims

The main course objective is to give the students a possibility to study, discuss and critically analyse the different roles financial accounting may have on the capital market. A subsidiary objective, or as a mean to achieve the main objective, is to use today's research and researchers in financial accounting; how it is done and what we know and don't know.

Content

On the bottom line of the course rests an intriguing question that directs the course contents: How does financial accounting contribute to an efficient capital market? The question implies that the capital market can be not only more or less efficient in relation to existing (accounting) information, but also more or less sophisticated in relation to what the capital market learns.

With the exception of a couple of well known research articles, the course content consists of finished research articles and articles under production by the teaching staff. The articles represent different aspects of the role of accounting on the capital market.

Each article will be discussed during a literature seminar with the author (-s) as seminar leader. The articles will be presented and discussed under three themes; capital market efficiency, accounting and capital market regulation, value relevance of accounting information.

Instruction

The course language is English. The course will comprise literature seminars with article presentation and discussion, headed by the handful researchers doing research in the area. A common case will be used as glue keeping together the different literature seminars

Assessment

Performance is evaluated in a written test (5 points) with the grades Failed (U), Passed (G) and Passed with distinction(VG)

Attention Swedish students: only completed courses can be recognised in your degree.