Austin Moss
Assistant Professor of Accounting
Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder
My research uses unique data and settings to study how everyday people — retail investors, but also voters, consumers, and the broader public — access, process, and act on financial information, and whether they are better off for it. Much of the accounting literature has centered on sophisticated institutions; my work focuses on the ordinary person, who increasingly bears the consequences of financial decisions directly.
About
A theme across my work is an unfortunate but informative one: making information cheaper, clearer, or easier to process does not reliably make people’s decisions better. Across settings, the breakdown is rarely about whether people receive information — it is about what they do with it. To study these questions, I match the method to the question, combining large-sample archival analysis, field and laboratory experiments, proprietary-data partnerships, and large language models.
I received my Ph.D. in Accounting from the University of Iowa in 2022. My research has appeared in Management Science and the Journal of Accounting & Economics, and my dissertation received the FARS Best Dissertation Award. At CU Boulder I am also a research affiliate of the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility (CESR) and the Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making (CFDM).
Contact
Email: austin.moss@colorado.edu
Office: 402L, Koelbel Building, 995 Regent Drive
Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309