accounting phd in uk

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Accounting and Finance

• Entry year 2024
• Duration Full time 4 Years

The Department of Accounting and Finance at Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) invites applications for PhD program in Accounting and Finance . You will be working alongside world-leading academics in a busy, exciting and innovative department.

We are looking for highly motivated candidates who have an excellent first degree and outstanding Master's level degree performance. Qualifications should be in a related discipline to your intended PhD studies. You should also be committed to pursuing an academic career. We are offering full-time studentships to commence in October 2024. All studentships pay a generous living allowance (the 2023 ESRC award was £18,622 per annum) and offer a fee waiver for four years.

The department offers an excellent research environment, with a high level of collegiality, subscriptions to state-of-the-art databases, a strong seminar series, and a senior visitors program. The Department of Accounting and Finance is one of the largest departments within LUMS – a world-ranked international business school that is highly regarded by the Financial Times, QS, The Economist and more. In the 2014 and 2021 Research Excellence Framework , LUMS was ranked first in the UK in research power and is one of few business schools whose programs are accredited by the three major international business school accreditation bodies: AMBA, EQUIS and AACSB.

The Department offers a PhD Program in Accounting and Finance. PhD students are required to complete a portfolio of PhD level courses and seminars covering finance theory, econometric and statistical methods, and research methodology. Upon successfully completing the coursework, you will then research and write a thesis on a topic which you are passionate about. Two subject experts will offer detailed supervision to ensure it will contribute new knowledge to the academic community. You will also have the opportunity to gain international experience by visiting a leading US/European school with expertise in a relevant research area. We offer an excellent environment for PhD studies, including dedicated office space, generous funding of conference and research visits, access to many specialised databases, as well as scientific computing facilities and IT support.

The Department has been consistently building the strength of a doctoral program for many years. It has developed comprehensive PhD training to enable our PhD graduates to succeed in the job market. Apart from training delivered by our own excellent faculty, our department regularly invites distinguished visiting professors from the best universities in the world to deliver doctoral tutorials on specialised research topics. Our PhD students have the privilege of being trained by world-leading scholars every summer and have extensive opportunities to consult external experts.

In recent years, our PhD graduates have successfully joined many excellent universities, research centres and institutions, including Australian National University, Bocconi University, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Durham University, LSE, Liverpool, Manchester, Monash, and Warwick Universities.

Your department

• Accounting and Finance Lancaster University Management School
• Make an enquiry form
• Telephone +44 (0)1524 592938

Research Excellence Framework 2021

Lancaster University Management School: 100% of research environment rated 'world-leading' and rated number 1 business school in the UK for 'research power' in REF 2021 .

Jackie talks about why she chose Lancaster University Management School for her PhD in Accounting and Finance

Programme structure

During your first year, you will be required to complete modules including accounting and finance theory, econometric and statistical methods and research methodology. Explore our module listings in the tabs below.

• PhD in Accounting
• PhD in Finance
• Research Training Seminars

Below is an overview of the modules you will study in your first year:

Below is an overview of the modules you will study in your first year.

There are two compulsory seminars in the first term which include an online test

• Ethics and Research

The Department of Accounting and Finance provides you with access to a number of leading financial databases. This valuable resource enables you to acquire crucial skills that are highly desirable to employers, making you stand out in the competitive job market.

For more information, please contact Justin Chircop

Entry requirements

Academic requirements.

A relevant Master's degree (UK or equivalent) with Distinction level performance, both overall and in the dissertation. In exceptional circumstances, applicants with an upper second class honours degree and relevant research experience may be considered.

If you have studied outside of the UK, we would advise you to check our list of international qualifications before submitting your application.

Additional Requirements

As part of your application you will also need to provide a viable research proposal of up to 5000 words which has potential to make a significant contribution to prior literature. Guidance can be found on our writing a research proposal webpage.

English Language Requirements

We may ask you to provide a recognised English language qualification, dependent upon your nationality and where you have studied previously.

We normally require an IELTS (Academic) Test with an overall score of at least 7.5 and a minimum of 6.0 in each element of the test. We also consider other English language qualifications .

If your score is below our requirements, you may be eligible for one of our pre-sessional English language programmes .

Contact: Admissions Team +44 (0) 1524 592032 or email [email protected]

Course structure

You will study a range of modules as part of your course, some examples of which are listed below.

Information contained on the website with respect to modules is correct at the time of publication, but changes may be necessary, for example as a result of student feedback, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes, and new research. Not all optional modules are available every year.

Our research seminars with external speakers attract leading academics that present their current research. Attending such seminars exposes participants to current research trends and allows them to expand their network. We encourage active student participation in seminars and their contact with seminar speakers. To facilitate better understanding of seminar papers, we will conduct regular pre-seminar meetings that are going to discuss in detail presented papers. The objective of pre-seminar meetings are:

• Facilitate better understanding of current research streams and presented papers;
• Provide a platform for exchanging ideas and opinions on current research streams;
• Help you provide informed feedback on presented research;
• Improve your writing skills and critical thinking;
• Further connect PhD students and our faculty by conducting regular meetings with different faculty members.

The course covers key theoretical areas of financial accounting research. It provides a crucial link to the literature for students seeking to strengthen the theoretical foundations of their empirical research. The underlying perspective is an economic one and implicitly assumes a stock market setting defines the corporate financial information environment.

By the end of the course, students will be able to understand four fundamental theoretical areas that underpin research in financial accounting, namely mandatory financial disclosure, voluntary financial disclosure, the politics of accounting regulation, and agency and contracting theory.

The course covers four topics as follows:

• The social value of (mandatory) financial disclosure
• Voluntary financial disclosure
• The role of regulation in accounting research
• Agency and contracting theory

This module is designed to introduce students to some of the core issues associated with empirical accounting research through the review of recent trends in accounting research. The module will discuss the importance of incremental contribution, basic research design issues, issues with analysing data and tabulating results, and extending extant research. The module will comprise a mixture of faculty-led lectures, interactive student-led presentations and discussions.

• Accounting conservatism
• Recognition vs. disclosure
• IFRS adoption
• Bank accounting
• Financial instruments and fair value accounting
• Economic consequences of financial reporting and disclosure

This is a module in accounting research for first-year doctoral students. The module comprises nine weekly sessions, each based on a published academic paper (or suite of papers). Each session involves a student-led discussion of the paper(s), with faculty providing a facilitating role for the discussion. The aim is to understand key research contributions, methods, and opportunities for further research.

• The determinants and consequences of accounting choice
• Various measures of earnings quality and their determinants and consequences
• Accounting anomalies and the use of accounting information in fundamental analysis
• The role of auditors as a corporate governance mechanism
• • The application of experimental methods to examine accounting issues
• • Understanding of behavioural theory in accounting research

The course covers various aspects of equilibrium asset prices in dynamic economies. The aims of this course are to introduce students to the main asset pricing theories that are fundamental to research development in finance and to provide an understanding of how asset pricing models are formally constructed.

On completion of this unit successful students will be able to have

• an understanding of key elements in the mainstream asset pricing theories,
• systematic knowledge in both implications of asset pricing models and empirical implementations.

Topics covered

• Utility preferences 2
• Mean-variance theory and the CAPM
• Stochastic discount factor
• Arrow-Debreu economy and state prices
• Dynamic programming
• Consumption-based asset pricing
• Production-based asset pricing.

This course takes place in the second term and builds upon the Manchester taught module AcF853, which is an advanced dominantly theoretical asset pricing course. Spillover effects from AcF851 Advanced Quantitative Methods are also anticipated.

In the first part of the module recent advances in cross-sectional asset pricing will be covered. This will include an empirical treatment of the classical asset pricing model and its extensions and related testing and model specification approaches. This part will cover the critical assessment of existing models in the light of risk-based and behaviour explanations as well as multi-factor models related to profitability and investment patterns across firms.

In the second part of the module will focus and the consumption-based model both from a theoretical and empirical perspective.

In the third part of the module asset pricing with option implied information will be covered. This includes the theoretical coverage, and understanding of the options data structure as well as the empirical implementation in advanced software packages.

The last part of the module will focus on mutual and hedge funds. This includes their performance evaluation and performance attribution from a mainly empirical perspective. Unique characteristics of hedge funds and various hedge fund strategies will be covered.

The topics covered in this module will be fine-tuned to the specific decomposition of each year's PhD student cohort.

This course is designed to help students understand how to operationalize empirical research on topics that are central to corporate finance. The overarching goal is to expose students to “state-of-the-art” empirical research methods and prepare them to conduct their own work using new tools. All students with an interest in finance, economics, accounting, human resources, and related disciplines are welcome to take the course.

The course will include:

• Endogeneity and Basic Identification Strategies
• Difference Estimators
• LATE and Regression Discontinuity Design
• Matching Estimators

This course introduces doctoral students to the knowledge and skills in empirical research on corporate finance. Topics include capital structure, corporate liquidity management, payout policies, and executive compensation. Selected papers in relevant literature will be discussed, with a focus on research ideas, data sources, and empirical methodologies. This course aims to help students identify and formulate research questions that may lead to dissertation topics.

After successfully completing the course students are expected to have:

• A broader knowledge of empirical research in corporate finance;
• A better understanding of how empirical techniques can be used to answer research questions in the areas covered in the course;
• More confidence in presenting and defending their own research;
• Formulate one research idea with concrete research agenda.

This course will cover econometric techniques on an advanced level that form the basis for quantitative and empirical research in Finance and Accounting. It will also cover the related necessary programming skills in advanced econometrics and statistical software packages such as MatLab and GAUSS. The course will start with covering two key areas: i) Generalized Methods of Moments and ii) Maximum Likelihood Techniques in a) time series models, b) multiple equations models and c) panel frameworks.

Depending on the composition of the students’ cohort additional advanced methods that will be covered in the course may include: Simulated Maximum Likelihood, Efficient Important Sampling, Indirect Inference, Bayesian Methods, High-Frequency Financial Econometrics, Point Processes, Count Data Models, Limited Dependent Variable models.

The success of developing and publishing accounting research critically depends on the knowledge of the data and programming skills to manage large datasets. The course will introduce students to key databases in accounting research, will train students how to use these data, and will develop students’ programming skills and applied econometrics. This module is designed to introduce students to the main research design choices and methods in empirical accounting research. The areas covered by the module include data collection and main financial databases, handling large datasets using STATA, analysing data and tabulating results. The module provides a broad overview of major data operations and statistical techniques used in accounting research and shows how to effectively program using STATA and other software packages. Further the module, introduces students to the Python and R programming languages.

This module covers the econometric theory and application of selected econometric methods. The first part (Weeks 1-5) covers Time Series Econometrics, Panel Data Econometrics and Financial Econometrics. The second part (Weeks 6-10) covers Panel Data extensions, Discrete choice models and Tobit models.

• Time Series Econometrics: Statistical Inference, Time Series Modelling, Modes of Convergence, Spurious regression, Nonparametric Methods
• Panel Data Econometrics: Pooled Regression, Fixed Effects/Random Effects, Dynamic Panel Models
• Introduction to Financial Econometrics: Asset Returns, Expectations, Volatility, ICAM, Realized Volatility, High-Frequency Methods
• Panel Data extensions: Endogeneity, IV estimation, Treatment effects, Diff-in-Diff estimators
• Discrete Choice Models: Binary models (Probit/Logit), Ordered Probit/Logit, Multinominal Probit/Logit
• Tobit and Selection Models

The Pilot study/Research proposal for the PhD scheme continues on from the research undertaken in the literature review and is the final preparation before their initial paper. It is intended to help provide the student to expand their knowledge of the appropriate theoretical and empirical literature and attempt to plan a project that would make an incremental contribution to the research area. This may consist of collecting an appropriate data set that will be analysed at a later date, or constructing a theoretical framework that can be built on at a later date.

The aim of this course is to equip students with the tools necessary to enable them to make the core investment management decisions that managers face on a daily basis as well as the knowledge as to where they can find the information necessary to apply those tools. This course covers fundamental concepts and key issues in factor investing; equilibrium theories of asset pricing; mutual funds, ETFs and hedge funds; Environmental, Social and Governance; textual analysis in empirical asset pricing.

This module is designed to provide students who have no or little programming experience with introduction to Python programming in the context of academic research and real-life problem solving in accounting and finance. This module aims to develop students’ interests and confidence in financial programming and analysing big financial data, and to equip students with programming skills and data-driven problem-solving abilities.

This module will enable you to understand the key concepts and methods in data science, econometrics, and quantitative finance to carry out independent empirical work required for the job market, more advanced modules in accounting and finance and the MSc dissertation streams.

Fees and funding

The tuition fee for students with home fee status is set in line with the standard fee stipend provided by the UK Research Councils. The fee stipend for 2024/25 has not yet been set. For reference, the fee stipend for 2023/24 was full-time £4,712.

The international fee for new entrants in 2024/25 is full-time £20,790.

General fees and funding information

There may be extra costs related to your course for items such as books, stationery, printing, photocopying, binding and general subsistence on trips and visits. Following graduation, you may need to pay a subscription to a professional body for some chosen careers.

Specific additional costs for studying at Lancaster are listed below.

College fees

Lancaster is proud to be one of only a handful of UK universities to have a collegiate system. Every student belongs to a college, and all students pay a small College Membership Fee  which supports the running of college events and activities. Students on some distance-learning courses are not liable to pay a college fee.

For students starting in 2023 and 2024, the fee is £40 for undergraduates and research students and £15 for students on one-year courses. Fees for students starting in 2025 have not yet been set.

Computer equipment and internet access

To support your studies, you will also require access to a computer, along with reliable internet access. You will be able to access a range of software and services from a Windows, Mac, Chromebook or Linux device. For certain degree programmes, you may need a specific device, or we may provide you with a laptop and appropriate software - details of which will be available on relevant programme pages. A dedicated  IT support helpdesk  is available in the event of any problems.

The University provides limited financial support to assist students who do not have the required IT equipment or broadband support in place.

For most taught postgraduate applications there is a non-refundable application fee of £40. We cannot consider applications until this fee has been paid, as advised on our online secure payment system. There is no application fee for postgraduate research applications.

For some of our courses you will need to pay a deposit to accept your offer and secure your place. We will let you know in your offer letter if a deposit is required and you will be given a deadline date when this is due to be paid.

The fee that you pay will depend on whether you are considered to be a home or international student. Read more about how we assign your  fee status .

If you are studying on a programme of more than one year’s duration, the tuition fees for subsequent years of your programme are likely to increase each year. Read more about  fees in subsequent years .

Scholarships and bursaries

You may be eligible for the following funding opportunities, depending on your fee status and course. You will be automatically considered for our main scholarships and bursaries when you apply, so there's nothing extra that you need to do.

Unfortunately no scholarships and bursaries match your selection, but there are more listed on scholarships and bursaries page.

If you're considering postgraduate research you should look at our funded PhD opportunities .

We also have other, more specialised scholarships and bursaries - such as those for students from specific countries.

Browse Lancaster University's scholarships and bursaries .

Similar courses

• Accounting and Financial Management MSc
• Finance MSc
• Financial Management MSc
• Investment Management and Financial Analysis MSc

Find a PhD Topic

Discover the research interests of our academics to find a synergy with your desired area of research.

Studentships and Funding

Find out more about our range of options to help you fund your postgraduate studies.

Job market candidates

Our Accounting and Finance job market candidates are listed below. Please visit PhD Job Market Candidates for a full list of LUMS candidates.

For further details, please contact the Doctoral Office .

Accounting and Finance job market candidates

Mohamed Badawy

Adina Yelekenova

Centre for Financial Econometrics, Asset Markets and Macroeconomic Policy

Visiting PhD Scholars Program

Eligibility.

• The Visiting PhD Scholars program is intended for current doctoral students who are sufficiently fluent in English and proficient in their disciplines to make a positive contribution to the research culture of Lancaster University Management School (LUMS).
• Applicants must be doctoral students. Individuals who have already obtained their PhD are not eligible for this program.
• The Visiting PhD Scholars program and its requirements and procedures are subject to change without notice.

Visiting PhD Scholars are charged a registration levy of £500 for visits of up to 3 months.

For visits more than 3 months, visiting PhD Scholars are charged a tuition fee at the standard rate (e.g., £19,520 per year at the 2023/24 rate) or on a pro-rata basis. The department is a member of the EAA ARC International PhD Visit Scheme that provides funding for visiting PhD Scholars.

Application

In order to apply for this PhD Visiting Scholar Program, students must first find a LUMS faculty supervisor. A directory of Accounting and Finance faculty along with a description of their research interests and contact information can be found in the Faculty pages .

To be considered, applicants must submit the following documents to PhD Director in Accounting, Dr Justin Chircorp or PhD Director in Finance, Dr Chelsea Yao .

• Academic transcripts (including PhD coursework transcript)
• A request for a specific time to visit (begin date and end date)
• A brief statement (not to exceed two pages) written by the applicant explaining the purpose and goals of the visit, including the details of the research project that the applicant plans to work on while in Lancaster
• A recommendation letter from a faculty member at the applicant’s home institution.

Interested students should apply at least three months prior to the start of their intended visit.

=65th in the world for Accounting and Finance

Lancaster is ranked 11th in the UK and joint 65th in the world for Accounting and Finance according to the QS World Rankings by Subject 2023, one of nine subjects at Lancaster to be featured in the top 100 in these prestigious listings.

Alumni Profiles

Jacqui Munro

PhD Accounting and Finance , 2019

PhD Accounting & Finance , 2018

Zhifang Zhang

PhD Accounting & Finance , 2017

PhD Accounting & Finance, 2016

Joana Cardoso Fontes

PhD Accounting & Finance, 2014

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The information on this site relates primarily to 2024/2025 entry to the University and every effort has been taken to ensure the information is correct at the time of publication.

The University will use all reasonable effort to deliver the courses as described, but the University reserves the right to make changes to advertised courses. In exceptional circumstances that are beyond the University’s reasonable control (Force Majeure Events), we may need to amend the programmes and provision advertised. In this event, the University will take reasonable steps to minimise the disruption to your studies. If a course is withdrawn or if there are any fundamental changes to your course, we will give you reasonable notice and you will be entitled to request that you are considered for an alternative course or withdraw your application. You are advised to revisit our website for up-to-date course information before you submit your application.

More information on limits to the University’s liability can be found in our legal information .

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