Rong Zhao

Rong Zhao is an Associate Professor of Accounting at Haskayne School of Business. Her primary research interests are in the financial accounting area including limitations of financial reporting for new economy firms, analyst and management forecasts, and supply chain information. She won the prestigious Deloitte Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for her PhD thesis and is a recipient of SSHRC Insight Grant and several CPA Alberta research grants. She teaches financial accounting both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Since joining Haskayne, she has been nominated several times by students for teaching awards and received the MBA Society Outstanding Teaching and Learning Award in 2019. Prior to her academic career, she was a CPA licensed in Texas and worked as a tax accountant and business systems analyst at the RIA division of Thomson Reuters.

Selected Publications

Rajgopal, S., A. Srivastava, and R. Zhao. Do Digital Technology Firms Earn Excess Profits? Alternative Perspectives. The Accounting Review. Forthcoming.

Govindarajan V., A. Srivastava, and R. Zhao. 2021. Mind the GAAP? Harvard Business Review (May 4, 2021).

Gleason, C., Z. Ling, and R. Zhao. 2020. Selective Disclosure and the Role of Form 8-K in the Post-Reg FD Era. Journal of Business Finance and Accounting.

Rajgopal, S., A. Srivastava, and R. Zhao. 2020. Do Digital Technology Firms Earn Excess Profits? California Management Review (Nov 19, 2020).

Acito, A., D. Folsom, and R. Zhao. 2019. Management Sales Forecasts and Firm Market Power. Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance.

Zhao, R., R. Mashruwala, S. Pandit, and J. Balakrishnan. 2018. Supply Chain Relational Capital and the Bullwhip Effect: An Empirical Analysis Using Financial Disclosures. International Journal of Operations & Production Management.

Frank, M. M, L. Lynch, S. Rego, and R. Zhao. 2018. Are Corporate Risk-Taking Practices Indicative of Aggressive Reporting Practices? Journal of the American Taxation Association. 

Patro, S., L. Zhang, and R. Zhao. 2018. Director Tenure and Corporate Social Responsibility: The Tradeoff between Experience and Independence. Journal of Business Research.

Zhao, R. 2017. Revenue Benchmark Beating and the Sector-Level Investor Pricing of Revenue and Earnings. Accounting Horizons.

Johnson, B.J., and R. Zhao. 2012. Contrarian Share Price Reactions to Earnings Surprises. Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance.

• Courses