Helps students see the bigger picture.
Brian Akins is an associate professor of accounting in the Business & Economics faculty at Rice University’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. He teaches financial accounting in the full-time MBA, professional MBA, and Ph.D. programs, as well as Financial Statement Analysis for MBA and undergraduate students, Global Field Experience in international locations such as Madrid, Medellín, Buenos Aires, and Lima, and Contemporary Accounting Research Topics for Ph.D. students. Akins has received numerous Awards for Excellence in Teaching from Rice University MBA classes, including the FMBA Full Time Class of 2023, Alumni Awards in 2021 and 2025, FMBA Full Time Class of 2020, MBAP Evening Class of 2017, FMBA Full Time Class of 2015, and MBAP Evening Class of 2014. He was also named Rice Business Career Hero in 2023.
Akins earned a Ph.D. in Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012, with a dissertation examining the relationship between financial reporting quality and uncertainty about credit risk captured by disagreement among rating agencies. He holds an M.B.A. in Finance from Rice University in 2006, an M.A. in Biblical Interpretation from Lubbock Christian University in 2008, and a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997. His career includes serving as Assistant Professor at Rice from 2012 to 2020, promotion to Associate Professor in 2020, William S. Mackey, Jr. and Verne F. Simons Term Distinguished Assistant Professor from 2018 to 2019, and Visiting Professor at Universidad EAFIT in Medellín, Colombia, in Fall 2024. Earlier accolades encompass the MIT Sloan School of Management Doctoral Fellowship from 2007 to 2012, Deloitte Foundation Doctoral Fellowship in Accounting in 2009-2010, Jones Scholar Award in 2006, and Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business Academic Scholarship from 2004 to 2006. Akins’ research focuses on financial reporting quality and the impact of accounting in debt and equity market settings, including fixed income markets, credit rating agencies, financial contracting, banking, information asymmetry, market competition, and corruption. Key publications are “Blocking Block-Formation: Evidence from Private Loan Contracts” with David De Angelis and Rustam Zufarov (Management Science, forthcoming); “CEO Short-Term Incentives and the Agency Cost of Debt” with Jonathan Bitting, David De Angelis, and Maclean Gaulin (Contemporary Accounting Research, 2025); “Debt Contracting on Management” with David De Angelis and Maclean Gaulin (The Journal of Finance, 2020); “Financial Reporting Quality and Uncertainty about Credit Risk among the Ratings Agencies” (The Accounting Review, 2018); “Corruption in Bank Lending: The Role of Timely Loan Loss Recognition” with Yiwei Dou and Jeff Ng (Journal of Accounting and Economics, 2017); “Bank Competition and Financial Stability: Evidence from the Financial Crisis” with Lynn Li, Jeff Ng, and Tjomme Rusticus (Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2016); and “Investor Competition over Information and the Pricing of Information Asymmetry” with Jeff Ng and Rodrigo Verdi (The Accounting Review, 2012).