Professor Lamia Chourou Recognized for Her Outstanding Doctoral Thesis

Professor Lamia Chourou received the award for Best Doctoral Thesis in business at her convocation ceremony at Queen’s University, where she earned a Ph.D. in Accounting. A Certified General Accountants (CGA) of Ontario Fellow, she also holds a Ph.D. in finance (University of Tunis). Her research focuses on capital markets, and in particular, fair value accounting, corporate governance and executive compensation.

Professor Chourou’s thesis dealt with managerial discretion in estimating fair values. She found evidence indicating that the market to a larger extent trusts fair value estimates by managers of firms located in more religious areas in the U.S. She also found that religiosity matters more when other external monitoring mechanisms are low. Her thesis adds to the new emerging literature on the effect of firm geographic location on several accounting and finance issues.