Rate My Professor Neil Fargher

Neil Fargher is Emeritus Professor of Accounting in the Research School of Accounting within the Australian National University’s College of Business and Economics. He holds the position of Professor of Accounting, with his research focused on auditing and financial accounting. His work particularly examines how risk is measured, communicated to the market, and received by investors. Specific research areas include the demand for auditing, audit report qualifications, measuring types of risk, leverage, hedge effectiveness, valuation, and assurance services for public offerings. He has evaluated regulatory initiatives directed at audit firms to improve audit quality, funded by the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project scheme. Fargher teaches courses such as BUSN 4013/BUSN 8013 Research Methods in Commerce, BUSN 1001 Business Reporting and Analysis, and BUSN 4100/BUSN 8100 Seminal Research in Accounting.

Fargher’s research appears in prestigious journals including Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, Contemporary Accounting Research, and Management Science, as well as industry publications like The CPA Journal and Australian Accounting Review. Key publications include “Audit reporting for going-concern uncertainty: A research synthesis” (Carson, Fargher, Geiger, Lennox, Raghunandan et al., 2013); “Companies’ use of whistle-blowing to detect fraud: An examination of corporate whistle-blowing policies” (Lee and Fargher, 2013); “Responses by Australian auditors to the global financial crisis” (Xu, Carson, Fargher, and Jiang, 2013); “Does short selling amplify price declines or align stocks with their fundamental values?” (Curtis and Fargher, 2014); “The impact of Ball and Brown (1968) on generations of research” (Fargher and Wee, 2019); “Accounting for financial instruments with characteristics of debt and equity: finding a way forward” (Fargher, Sidhu, Tarca et al., 2019); and “Trends in Auditor Reporting in Australia: A Synthesis and Opportunities for Research” (Carson, Zhang, and Fargher, 2016). He received the 2015 ANU College of Business and Economics award for Excellence in Supervision, the 2014 Award for Outstanding Service to Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, and the 2013 Peter Brownell Manuscript Award. Fargher is a member of the Australian Accounting Standards Board Academic Advisory Panel.