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William J. Mayew CV

Martin L. Black, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Fuqua School of Business
A424 Fuqua School of Business, 90120, Durham, NC 27708
CV

Overview


Bill Mayew is the Martin L. Black Jr. Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.  Professor Mayew received his Ph.D. in Business Administration (Accounting) from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006 and has been on the Fuqua faculty since graduation. He previously worked in accounting and financial reporting assurance at Ernst & Young.

Professor Mayew studies managerial communication of firm performance, including both voluntary disclosures made outside of the financial reporting system and mandatory financial disclosures in financial reports.  His research uses theories from economics and psychology to better understand the determinants and consequences of voluntary and mandatory managerial communication.  He received the 2008 Financial Research Association best paper award for his work on the information content of managerial vocal cues during earnings conference calls.  He also received the Glen McLaughlin Prize for Research in Accounting Ethics in 2013 for his work on measuring CEO integrity from corporate communication in shareholder letters and again in 2017 for his work on auditor deception detection capabilities from earnings conference calls. From the Journal of Financial Economics he received the 2019 Jensen Prize for his work on race discrimination in the higher education bond market.

Professor Mayew’s research has appeared in a wide range of journals including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, The Accounting Review, Review of Accounting Studies, Contemporary Accounting Research, Evolution & Human Behavior, Biology Letters and Decision Support Systems.  He was an editor at The Accounting Review and has presented his research to professional money managers, sell-side financial analysts, investor relations personnel, the Securities and Exchange Commission and on Capitol Hill.  He teaches various financial accounting related courses across the Executive Education, MBA, MMS and MQM programs, and has received awards for teaching excellence in both the daytime and weekend executive MBA programs.  In 2014, he was named one of the top 40 business school professors in the world under 40 years old by Poets & Quants.

Current Duke Appointments & Affiliations


Martin L. Black, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Business Administration · 2021 - Present Fuqua School of Business
Professor of Business Administration · 2018 - Present Fuqua School of Business

Recent News Items


Published June 28, 2021
Duke Awards 22 Distinguished Professorships
Published March 24, 2020
On Earnings Calls, Cynics Move Markets More
Published December 9, 2019
Why a New CFO Means More Money for the CEO

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Recent Scholarly Works


On the usefulness of guidance reports

Journal article Review of Accounting Studies · September 1, 2026 We extract and describe corporate-issued guidance contained in over 23,000 LSEG Guidance Reports of S&P 1,500 firms from 2005 to 2021. Our sample contains 1.735 million Guidance Reports guidance instances that span over 180 guided items and fall into three ... Full text Cite

Shaping expectations, losing flexibility: A study of CEO promises as strategic communication tools

Journal article Strategic Management Journal · July 1, 2026 Research Summary: CEO promises are powerful but understudied communication tools. We develop a dual-mechanism framework theorizing that while CEO promises elevate stakeholder expectations, they simultaneously constrain strategic flexibility. We argue that ... Full text Cite
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Education


University of Texas, Austin · 2006 Ph.D.