Profile

Vasiliki Athanasakou

Sobey School of Business
Accounting

Professor
Office: SB311
Phone: 910-420-5108
Email: v.athanasakou@smu.ca

Vasiliki Athanasakou joined Saint Mary's University in 2018. She holds an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Accounting and Finance from Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. Vasiliki joined London School of Economics in 2007 and whilst there spent her sabbatical term in Ivey Business School in 2016 thereby nourishing a passion for joining Canadian Academic Life. Her research interests and publications fall in the area of voluntary disclosure with a particular emphasis on annual report narratives, earnings management and corporate governance, information uncertainty and risk and capital market players. Vasiliki is an ACCA affiliate and has worked in the audit assurance of Deloitte and Touche (Athens). She has taught graduate, undergraduate and executive courses in financial accounting, financial reporting, and security analysis and valuation.

 

Publications

- Athanasakou Vasiliki and Martin Walker 2023. A Measure of Management’s Withholding of Bad News. European Accounting Review (Forthcoming).

- Athanasakou Vasiliki, Abdlmutaleb Boshanna, Natalia Kochetova, Georgios Voulgaris, 2023, Strategy and business model disclosures in annual reports: The role of legal regime, The B British Accounting Review, 101190, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890838923000203?via%3Dihub  [Special issue on Corporate Disclosures]

- Athanasakou Vasiliki, Daniel Ferreira and Lisa Goh. 2022. Changes in CEO Stock Option Grants: A Look at the Numbers. Journal of Corporate Finance 75. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0929119922000694?via%3Dihub 

- Athanasakou Vasiliki, Florian Eugster, Thomas Schleicher and Martin Walker. 2020. Annual Report Narratives and the Cost of Equity Capital: U.K. Evidence of a U-shaped Relation, European Accounting Review 29 (1), 27-54, 2020.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09638180.2019.1707102 
(Special Issue on Textual Analysis).

- Athanasakou Vasiliki and George Athanassakos. 2019. Earnings Quality and Book-to-market in the Cross section of Expected Returns. Multinational Finance Journal, 23(3/4), 169-210, (2019).

- Mahmoud El-Haj, Paul Rayson, Steven Young, Andrew Moore, Martin Walker, Thomas Schleicher, and Vasiliki Athanasakou. 2016. Learning tone and attribution for financial text mining. Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings-With ISBN/ISSN: 9782951740891. Proceedings of LREC 2016, Tenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation. European Language Resources Association (ELRA), pp. 1820-1825. http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2016/pdf/256_Paper.pdf.

- Athanasakou, Vasiliki and Ana Simpson. 2016. Investor Attention to Rounding as a Salient Forecast Feature. International Journal of Forecasting 31, 1212-1233.

- Athanasakou Vasiliki and Khaled Hussainey. 2014. The Perceived Credibility of Forward-Looking Performance Disclosures. Accounting and Business Research 44 (3), 227-259 (2014).

- Athanasakou Vasiliki, Norman C. Strong and Martin Walker. 2011. The Market Reward for Achieving Analyst Expectations: Does Managing Expectations or Earnings Matter?. Journal of Business Finance and Accounting 38, 58-94 (2011).

- Athanasakou Vasiliki, Norman C. Strong and Martin Walker. 2010. The Association Between Classificatory and Inter-temporal Smoothing: Evidence from the UK’s FRS3. International Journal of Accounting 45, 224-257 (2010).

- Athanasakou, Vasiliki. 2010. Discussion of ‘The Impact of Dual Class Structure on Earnings Management Activities’. Journal of Business, Finance and Accounting 37, 486–494 (2010).

- Athanasakou, Vasiliki, Norman C. Strong and Martin Walker. 2009. Earnings Management or Forecast Guidance to Meet Analyst Expectations? Accounting and Business Research 39 (1), 3–35 (2009).

- Athanasakou Vasiliki, Norman C. Strong and Martin Walker. 2007. Classificatory Income Smoothing: The Impact of a Change in Regime of Reporting Financial Performance. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy 26(4), 387–435.

 

Non refereed publications

- Athanasakou Vasiliki and Ana Simpson. 2018. How much attention do investors pay to  rounding in earnings forecasts? with Ana Simpson. London School of Economics Business  Review.

- Athanasakou, Vasiliki, Daniel Ferreira and Lisa Goh. 2017. Changes in CEO Stock Option Grants: A look at the Numbers (with Daniel Ferreira and Lisa Goh). Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation (https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/11/10/changes-in-ceo-stock-option-grants-a-look-at-the-numbers/

- Athanasakou, Vasiliki, Young-Soo Choi, Steven Lin , Steven Young and Martin Walker. 2008. Understanding the earnings reporting practices of UK firms and their interactions with analysts’ earnings forecasts. Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales Centre for Business Performance Briefing 2008.

 

Working papers

- Afzali Mansoor, Vasiliki Athanasakou and Siri Terjesen. Lead Independent Directors and Internal Information Environment.

- Athanasakou, Vasiliki, Martin Walker, Steven Young, Paulo Alves, Mahmoud El-Haj, and Paul Rayson. Mandatory Annual Report Descriptions of Business Model and Strategy, Investor Uncertainty and Disclosure Cascade Effects
Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3212854.

- Athanasakou Vasiliki, Yasmine Chahed and Lisa Goh. From Shakespeare to Annual Reports: the Role of Corporate Reporting Agencies.

- Athanasakou, Vasiliki and Per Olsson. Earnings Quality and Corporate Governance.

- Athanasakou Vasiliki and Per Olsson.  Managerial Discretion and Firm Fundamentals. 
Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=27156366.

- Walker, Martin, Steven Young, Vasiliki Athanasakou, Paul Rayson, and Thomas Scheicher. Who’s the Fairest of Them All? A Comparison of Methods for Classifying Tone and Causal Reasoning in Earnings-Related Management Discourse .
Available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3721976.