About

Robert Bushman is The Forensic Accounting Distinguished Professor at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. His research investigates the roles played by accounting information in corporate governance, managerial compensation, debt-contracting, and bank regulation. His work has been extensively published in leading academic journals and has been presented at numerous national and international conferences, as well as at invited seminars at universities around the world. He is an award-winning teacher recognized for both MBA and PhD teaching. Dr. Bushman teaches MBA courses in structuring complex deals, financial management of healthcare organizations, and the use of information for strategy, decision-making, and incentives. He has served on many doctoral committees for PhD students who have been placed at prestigious institutions such as Chicago Booth, Columbia, Berkeley, Duke, Wharton, Michigan, Georgetown, Rochester, Virginia, and Washington University in St. Louis. From 2006 to 2021, he served as area chair of accounting at UNC Kenan-Flagler. Dr. Bushman received his PhD from the University of Minnesota and his BBA in accounting from Ohio University.

Research topics

• Business
• Accounting
• Economics
• Microeconomics
• Finance
• Actuarial science
• Marketing
• Financial economics
• Psychology
• Monetary economics
• Law

Selected publications

• Dynamic Adjustment of CEO Incentives, Contracting Frictions and Firm Performance 

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Dynamic Adjustment of CEO Incentives, Contracting Frictions, and Firm Performance

  The Accounting Review · 2025-05-05 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT We conceptualize equity incentive contracting as a dynamic process in which contracting frictions limit the speed at which equity incentives adjust to target levels. Slower adjustment speeds imply more prolonged deviations from value-maximizing targets and thus more severe negative effects on future performance. We find that contracting frictions significantly slow the speed of adjustment to target incentives (SOA). Consistent with frictions prolonging the persistence of deviations from target, we find that contracting frictions magnify the negative influence of deviations on future firm performance. Further, we find that the influence of contracting frictions on SOA operates through boards’ equity grant decisions. Our dynamic contracting perspective offers new insight into the relation between CEO incentives and firm performance by providing novel evidence that the speed of convergence to target incentives is a defining feature of the dynamic contracting process that translates inefficiency effects of contracting frictions into lower future performance. Data Availability: All data are publicly available from sources indicated in the text. JEL Classifications: M41.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Partisan Banks and Creditor Coordination within Loan Syndicates

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

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Bank Supervision and Organizational Capital: The Case of Minority Lending

  Journal of Accounting Research · 2024-03-05 · 17 citations

  article

  ABSTRACT We investigate whether improvements in banks' organizational capital and control systems facilitate increased loan origination to minority borrowers. We focus on bank supervisors' enforcement decisions and orders (EDOs) against banks and hypothesize that EDO‐imposed improvements in loan policies, internal governance, and employee training mitigate deficiencies in credit assessments and lending decisions that previously disadvantaged minority borrowers. We find that mortgage origination to minority borrowers increases following the resolution of EDOs, and more so for banks with stricter supervisors or more severe EDOs. Using a semisupervised machine learning method to analyze the text of EDOs, we find that such increases are higher for EDOs specifying revisions of loan policies, implementation of formal internal governance procedures, or more employee training. Overall, we find that EDO‐driven improvements in organizational capital generate unintended, positive social externalities that enhance access to credit for minority borrowers.

  PublisherDOI

• Under the Hood of Activist Fraud Campaigns: Private Information Quality, Disclosure Incentives and Stock Lending Dynamics

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Under the Hood of Activist Fraud Campaigns: Private Information Quality, Disclosure Incentives, and Stock Lending Dynamics

  The Accounting Review · 2024-07-16 · 5 citations

  article

  ABSTRACT Although activist short sellers can play a crucial role in fraud detection, they have come under scrutiny following accusations of systematically disseminating false negative information. We develop a framework delineating the roles of campaign-specific private information quality and short-selling dynamics in shaping disclosure incentives. We predict that the act of disclosure combined with pre-disclosure stock lending dynamics is informative about the quality of an activist’s private information. We find that increased pre-disclosure shorting intensity is associated with more negative post-disclosure returns, adverse media coverage, and consequential campaign outcomes, including auditor turnover, accounting restatements, class-action lawsuits, and performance-related delistings. Furthermore, elevated short-selling costs and risks magnify the association between pre-disclosure shorting intensity and post-disclosure underperformance. Finally, we examine V-shaped reversals and short covering following activists’ disclosures and find no evidence of systematic manipulation. We conclude that activists disclosing fraud allegations under their own names are discouraged from engaging in “short-and-distort” schemes. Data Availability: Data are available from the sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: G12; G14; G23; M41.

  PublisherDOI

• Bank Supervision and Managerial Control Systems: The Case of Minority Lending

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Bank Supervision and Managerial Control Systems: The Case of Minority Lending

  Finance and Economics Discussion Series · 2023-04-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  This paper investigates how bank supervisors’ enforcement decisions and orders (EDOs) influence the allocation of mortgage lending across demographic groups underlying a banks’ borrower base. Specifically, we investigate how banks’ mortgage lending to minority borrowers relative to white borrowers changes following the resolution of severe EDOs. We hypothesize that improvements in management control systems imposed by EDOs serve as channels through which EDOs affect a bank’s borrower base generally, and minority lending specifically. We empirically examine how changes in loan policies and internal governance mechanisms specified in EDOs influence banks’ mortgage lending decisions. We find that relative to white borrowers, mortgage lending to minority borrowers significantly increases following the resolution of EDOs, where this positive effect increases with the strictness of bank supervisors and severity of the EDO. Consistent with management controls serving as channels for this change, there is a more pronounced effect on minority lending when an EDO mandates improvements in lending policies and stronger internal governance over lending decisions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Influence of Short Selling on Negative Press Coverage of Firms

  Management Science · 2023 · 43 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Monetary economics
  • Business
  • Economics

  We hypothesize that after a relaxation of short selling constraints, an escalation in short selling activity will heighten incentives for short sellers to accelerate price discovery by revealing their negative information. Consistent with this conjecture, we find that the overall sentiment of media coverage tilts significantly more negative for pilot relative to control firms following exogenous relief of short sale constraints. We find a more pronounced effect for media-initiated articles relative to firm-initiated press releases. Further, following abnormal increases in short interest, there is a significantly greater increase in negative news flow for pilot relative to nonpilot firms. Finally, we find that stock returns of firms with lower short selling constraints become significantly more sensitive to negative news reports. This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting. Funding: The authors acknowledge the financial support of the Kenan-Flagler Business School and the Naveen Jindal School of Management. Supplemental Material: The data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4783 .

  PublisherDOI

• Grading bank managers: governance and performance implications of managerial ratings

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

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Abbie J. Smith

  University of Chicago

  23 shared

• Christopher D. Williams

  Ross School

  16 shared

• Raffi Indjejikian

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  10 shared

• Anya Kleymenova

  9 shared

• Regina Wittenberg Moerman

  8 shared

• Joseph D. Piotroski

  Stanford University

  7 shared

• Rimmy E. Tomy

  University of Chicago

  5 shared

• Zhonglan Dai

  The University of Texas at Dallas

  5 shared

Awards & honors

• The Forensic Accounting Distinguished Professor