Two Foster School of Business accounting faculty members have received national recognition from the American Accounting Association (AAA), highlighting the impact of their research on both the accounting profession and academic scholarship.
Elizabeth Blankespoor, Professor of Accounting and the Marguerite Reimers Endowed Faculty Fellow, received the AAA’s 2026 Distinguished Contribution to Accounting Literature Award, which recognizes published work that has made a significant and lasting contribution to accounting knowledge.
Blankespoor and her co-authors, Gregory S. Miller of the University of Michigan and Hal D. White of the University of Notre Dame, were honored for their 2014 paper, “The Role of Dissemination in Market Liquidity: Evidence from Firms’ Use of Twitter™. Their research examined how companies use social media to disseminate information to investors and the effects on financial markets.
More broadly, Blankespoor studies how information flows through capital markets, from the ways companies communicate with investors to how that information is processed and affects market outcomes. Recently, she and Foster colleague Darren Bernard examined how increasing business complexity can make it more difficult for investors to understand company performance.
The AAA also recognized Foster’s Charles M.C. Lee, the Kermit O. Hanson Professor in Accounting, with its 2026 Accounting Horizons Best Paper Award.
Lee and his co-authors—Shana Clor-Proell of Texas Christian University, Omri Even-Tov of the University of California, Berkeley, and Shivaram Rajgopal of Columbia University—received the award for “Bridging the Gap Between Academia and Practice in Accounting,” published in Accounting Horizons in 2025. The paper provides recommendations to enhance the relevance and impact of accounting scholarship on real-world financial practices.
“The impactful research of Professor Blankespoor and Professor Lee exemplify the Foster School’s reputation as one of the worlds’ top business schools,” said Frank Hodge, the Orin & Janet Smith Dean of the Foster School of Business. “These national recognition awards demonstrate that their research is both rigorous and relevant. We are very proud of their accomplishments.”
The awards will be presented at the AAA’s 2026 Global Connect conference in Las Vegas this August.