About

Elizabeth Blankespoor is a Professor of Accounting at the Foster School of Business, University of Washington. She holds a PhD from the University of Michigan, an MAcc from the University of Utah, and a BA from Dordt University. Her academic career includes positions at Stanford University from 2012 to 2018 and as an instructor at the University of Utah in 2007. Her research focuses on the influence of information costs and technology on corporate disclosure and how market participants utilize information in capital markets. She has received numerous awards for her teaching and research, including the PACCAR Teaching Award and the Full-time MBA Professor of the Year at UW Foster. Elizabeth Blankespoor is also actively involved in editorial roles for leading accounting journals, contributing to the advancement of research in her field.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Business
• Accounting
• Data Mining
• Marketing
• Political Science
• Economics
• Econometrics
• Programming language
• Actuarial science
• Microeconomics
• Data science
• Public relations

Selected publications

• Editorial data

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2026-04-07

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Editorial data

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2026-02-13

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Using GPT to Measure Business Complexity

  The Accounting Review · 2026-01-15 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Business complexity involves important tradeoffs for managers and investors, but empirical evidence is limited by measurement issues. We construct and validate a measure of business complexity using a GPT model fine-tuned on narrative disclosures and inline XBRL tags. We first show that our measure is associated with slower price formation in capital markets, consistent with complexity increasing processing costs. Next, we apply our measure to study the complexity of debt, an economically important topic that encompasses a wide range of features. The results show that nonstandard debt features such as call and convertibility provisions underlie debt complexity. We also find that debt complexity correlates with more persistent interest expense and better performance when lending conditions worsen, suggesting it is in part an adaptive response to manage financial risk. Overall, our study underscores the tradeoffs of business complexity and provides a flexible measure of complexity for future research. Data Availability: Contact authors for data, model weights, and measure. JEL Classifications: D82; D83; G14; G30; M40; M41.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Do Accountants Increase Economic Activity?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Finding an Alternative Disclosure Path: IPO Business Model Targets

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Information Processing Costs

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Generative AI and Investor Processing of Financial Information

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 8 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Editorial data

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2024-01-30

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Tapping into Virality: Corporate Engagement in Public Discourse

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Editorial data

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2024-04-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ed deHaan

  Stanford University

  16 shared

• Gregory S. Miller

  Ross School

  14 shared

• Bradley E. Hendricks

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  8 shared

• Hal D. White

  8 shared

• Christina Zhu

  7 shared

• Catherine Shakespeare

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  3 shared

• Brian P. Miller

  Migration Institute of Australia

  3 shared

• Kathy R. Petroni

  Michigan State University

  3 shared

Education

• PhD, Business Administration - Accounting

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  2012

Awards & honors

• PACCAR Teaching Award, UW Foster (2025)
• Full-time MBA Professor of the Year, UW Foster (2023)
• Best Paper Award, Review of Accounting Studies Conference (2…
• Dean's Excellence Award for Graduate Teaching (2021)
• AAA FARS Best Paper Award (2021)