About

Rebecca Hann is the Dean’s Professor of Accounting at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, where she also serves as the Associate Dean of Research and Doctoral Programs. Her research examines how disclosure and information frictions influence economic decisions and the allocation of resources across capital and labor markets. Her recent work focuses on the intersection of accounting and labor economics, with particular emphasis on human capital in the accounting profession and the effects of technological change on skill development and talent acquisition. She has been published in leading journals such as The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Finance, Management Science, and Review of Accounting Studies. Hann has also been appointed as an Editor of The Accounting Review. Recognized as an award-winning teacher, she has taught across undergraduate, MBA, EMBA, and PhD programs, receiving numerous teaching awards including the Distinguished Teaching Award, the Most Effective Core Professor Award, and the Krowe Award for Teaching Excellence. She has mentored over a dozen doctoral students who now hold faculty positions worldwide, and has received accolades such as the American Accounting Association’s Best Dissertation Supervision Award and the Smith PhD Program Faculty Mentor of the Year Award. Hann earned her PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Research topics

• Business
• Monetary economics
• Finance
• Political Science
• Accounting
• Economics
• Labour economics
• Law
• Psychology
• Industrial organization

Selected publications

• Painting the Resumes: Employee LinkedIn Revisions and Future Firm Performance

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• <span><b>Corporate Financing Activities and Business Cycle Fluctuations</b></span>

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Corporate Financing Activities and Business Cycle Fluctuations

  The Accounting Review · 2025-05-19

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT We examine whether corporate financing activities (CFA) in aggregate convey information about the macroeconomy. Using statement of cash flow information to construct a bottom-up measure of CFA, we find that it has significant predictive power for future economic activity when we exclude a small set of firms whose external financing is largely insulated from macroeconomic conditions. This CFA index has predictive power beyond that of the Gilchrist-Zakrajsek credit spread, aggregate earnings, and other macroeconomic indicators in predicting future GDP in both in-sample and out-of-sample forecasting tests. Impulse responses from a structural vector autoregression show that unexpected decreases in this CFA index lead to a large and persistent contraction in economic activity for up to four quarters. Our results suggest that a simple portfolio-based CFA measure helps capture supply-of-capital effects from the financial accelerator mechanism and hence has significant incremental predictive power for real economic activity. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: E32; E37; G17; M41.

  PublisherDOI

• Building credible commitments via board ties: Evidence from the supply chain

  Strategic Management Journal · 2025-07-20 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Research Summary Using a novel dataset that provides a comprehensive coverage of U.S. firms' industrial supply chain relationships, we find that firms with innovation specific to a buyer are more likely to share a common director with that buyer. This association is stronger when the buyer has a larger number of alternative suppliers. We further find that when a supplier–buyer pair shares a common director, the supplier's R&D investment is more sensitive to the investment opportunities of its buyer. Moreover, such pairs tend to have longer supply chain relationships. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that board ties serve as a credible commitment mechanism to support exchange along the supply chain and safeguard suppliers' buyer‐specific investments. Managerial Summary Our research shows that suppliers who create products or technologies tailored to a specific buyer are more likely to share a board member with that buyer. This relationship is stronger when the buyer has many other suppliers. Shared board members facilitate better communication and alignment between suppliers and buyers, leading to more effective R&D investments and longer‐lasting business relationships. These ties help reduce the risk for suppliers when investing in customized solutions. For business leaders, strategically leveraging board connections can strengthen supply chain partnerships, promote collaborative innovation, and safeguard investments in buyer‐specific technologies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Building Credible Commitments via Board Ties: Evidence from the Supply Chain

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Navigating Auditor Turnover: Early Promotion and Retention in the Audit Profession

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Auditor Skill Demands and Audit Quality: Evidence from Job Postings

  Management Science · 2024 · 23 citations

  • Business
  • Accounting
  • Psychology

  This study empirically examines the relation between audit quality and auditors’ cognitive and social skills. Using a novel data set of online job postings by accounting firms, we document substantial variation in the stated demand for auditors’ cognitive and social skills, suggesting that audit offices are not homogeneous in their preferences for such skills. We find a positive relation between audit quality and the prevalence of cognitive and social skills within an audit office’s job postings. This association is stronger for audit engagements that are more complex or require greater coordination, suggesting that cognitive and social skills are particularly important in engagements where effective communication and knowledge transfer, as well as sound professional judgment and skepticism, are needed. The association is also stronger for audit offices with greater investments in new technology, consistent with the complementary relation between cognitive and social skills and the use of technology. Overall, our study offers empirical evidence linking specific auditor skills to audit quality. This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting. Funding: C. Ham acknowledges financial support from the Blanche “Peg” Philpott Faculty Fellowship. R. N. Hann acknowledges financial support from KPMG. W. Wang acknowledges the financial support from the Hong Kong Research Grant Council [Grant 11503720]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.01640 .

  PublisherDOI

• The Price of an Accountant Shortage: Evidence from Job Vacancy Duration and Internal Control Weaknesses

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Does Talking the Climate Change Talk Affect Firm Value? Evidence from the Paris Agreement

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• 2021 Excellence in Refereeing

  Journal of Accounting Research · 2022 · 1 citations

  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Accounting
  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• Yue Zheng

  14 shared

• Philip G. Berger

  8 shared

• Lindsey A. Gallo

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  8 shared

• Maria Ogneva

  8 shared

• Hee‐Dong Kim

  6 shared

• K.R. Subramanyam

  University of Southern California

  6 shared

• Yvonne Y. Lu

  Lehigh University

  6 shared

• Congcong Li

  Duquesne University

  5 shared

Awards & honors

• Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, University of Maryland (2022)
• Outstanding Paper, IAS Mid-year Meeting, American Accounting…
• Excellence in Refereeing Award, Journal of Accounting Resear…
• The Most Effective Core Professor Award, Robert H. Smith Sch…
• The Allen J. Krowe Award for Teaching Excellence, Robert H.…