About

Hans B. Christensen is the Chookaszian Family Professor of Accounting and a David G. Booth Faculty Fellow at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His current research primarily focuses on the effect on society of regulation aimed at incentivizing firms to act socially responsible. This includes studying the impact of transparency regulation on healthcare prices and labor safety, as well as foreign corruption regulation on economic development. His work has been published in prominent academic journals such as the Journal of Accounting Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and Review of Financial Studies. Before joining the faculty at Chicago Booth in 2008, Christensen worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where he audited financial statements prepared according to US-GAAP, IFRS, and various European standards, and was involved in complex deals such as M&A transactions. His experience at PwC gave him insight into how firms choose to account for similar events differently across countries, which now informs his research on accounting choices and their consequences. Christensen earned a PhD in accounting from Manchester Business School in the United Kingdom. Outside of academia, he has been preparing for the Chicago Marathon for the past ten years and enjoys traveling.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Business
• Accounting
• Computer Science
• Computer Security
• Law
• Finance
• Economics
• Public relations
• Monetary economics
• Public economics

Selected publications

• From LinkedIn to Labor Statistics: Using <i>Revelio</i> Microdata for Labor Market Research in Developing Economies

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-11-17

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Mandatory CSR Disclosures and Real Asset Regulatory Leakage

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Accounting for sustainability and climate change: Special section overview

  Accounting Organizations and Society · 2024-07-29 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  No abstract

  PublisherDOI

• Filling the Governance Gap: Corporate Commitments and Environmental Externalities in the African Oil Sector

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

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Consumer Responses to the Revelation of Corporate Social Irresponsibility

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 17 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Racial Segregation and Audit Outcomes

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Nothing Gold Can Stay: Artisanal Mine Certifications and Conflict Dynamics in the Congo

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Reversing the Resource Curse: Foreign Corruption Regulation and the Local Economic Benefits of Resource Extraction

  American Economic Journal Applied Economics · 2023-12-27 · 23 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We examine how foreign corruption regulation affects the economic benefits communities receive from extraction activities in the resource-rich areas of Africa. After a mid-2000s increase in enforcement of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), nighttime luminosity increases by 15 percent (5 percent) in communities within a 10-kilometer (25-kilometer) radius of affected extraction facilities. Cash-wage employment also increases significantly, suggesting that the economic benefits are not limited to electricity access. Consistent with foreign corruption regulation mitigating the political resource curse, we find that perceived corruption decreases following the rise in FCPA enforcement. (JEL D73, F23, K22, L14, O13, O17, Q31)

  PublisherDOI

• Is Corporate Transparency the Solution to Political Failure on our Greatest Problems? A Discussion of Darendeli, Fiechter, Hitz, and Lehmann (2022)

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Is corporate transparency the solution to political failure on our greatest problems? A discussion of Darendeli, Fiechter, Hitz, and Lehmann (2022)

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2022-08-24 · 29 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Christian Leuz

  185 shared

• Luzi Hail

  European Corporate Governance Institute

  148 shared

• Mark G. Maffett

  17 shared

• Valeri V. Nikolaev

  13 shared

• Martin Walker

  Mott MacDonald (Czechia)

  9 shared

• Edward Lee

  University of Manchester

  7 shared

• Thomas Rauter

  7 shared

• Lisa Yao Liu

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Accounting

  Manchester Business School

  2008

Awards & honors

• Distinguished Alumni Award