Research
Empirical Economics
Chris Higson's research in empirical economics focuses on the long-term behaviour of company fundamentals and its relationship to the macroeconomy.
Current themes are as follows:
Competitive convergence in firm profitability. Sectoral and business cycle determinants. The secular process – is the world getting more competitive?
The stochastic processes of accounting primitives - sales, income, and balance sheet components.
Volatility in firm growth rates. The impact of shocks to sales on firm profits and empirical measurement of operating leverage.
Impact of the recession on company financial behaviour.
Merger, and bankruptcy, around the business cycle.
This is joint work with colleagues at Cambridge and in St Andrews. This research has received considerable continuing research funding, most recently from the European Union Finess Programme under Framework 7 to study financial integration and competitive convergence in Europe and the US.
Practice and Regulation
The other theme in Chris's work is practice-oriented and aimed at changing analyst practice and
regulatory policy. This work has principally been in the following areas:
Practice of financial analysis and valuation.
Accounting and valuation for intangible assets, in particular information, brands, and goodwill. Accounting for leases.
Tax reform and imputation taxes.
The monograph on Valuing Information as an Asset is particularly aimed at public sector. It describes the current evolution of the finance and accounting role. It postulates a dominant position for finance in the information age due to accounting’s traditional role as the information gatekeeper; but it shows that it is necessary to apply traditional accounting disciplines to knowledge assets. This paper will soon be available to download in pdf format.
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