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About David
Professor David Lont is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Accountancy & Finance at the University of Otago's Otago Business School. He joined the University of Otago in 1989 and has taught ACCT 310, accounting theory, first-year accounting, financial reporting and analysis, and a variety of postgraduate research papers. Lont holds the qualifications BCom(Hons), PhD, and is a Fellow of the Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand (FCA) and CPA Australia (FCPA Aust.). Throughout his career, he has served on numerous committees, including the Otago Branch of Chartered Accountants Australia & New Zealand (2003-2011), the Institute's publications committee (2006-2010), Corporate Annual Report Awards (2003-2011), and the PhD Scholarship committee (2008-2014, chairing it from 2012). He was also a panel member on the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) 2018 Quality Evaluation exercise.
His research specializations are in capital markets and the economics of financial reporting and auditing. Lont has published extensively in prestigious journals, including Accounting and Finance (winning the Peter Brownell prize for best paper in 2010 and runner-up prizes in 2009 and 2011), Abacus, Accounting Forum, Asia Pacific Journal of Accounting and Economics, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Education, and Pacific Accounting Review. Key recent publications include 'Mandated joint audits: Are two auditors better than one?' (2026, Journal of Accounting & Public Policy), 'Long term trends in non-audit fees and audit quality: New evidence based on going concern opinions and financial restatements' (2025, Accounting & Finance), 'The effects of extreme high temperature spells on financial performance' (2025, British Accounting Review), and 'Audit report lag and the cost of equity capital' (2024, Journal of Capital Market Studies). He has presented at the American Accounting Association national conference, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand (AFAANZ) annual conference, European Accounting Association, and plenary sessions at the Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics annual conference (2004, 2008, 2011, 2018) and ANCAAR (2012). Lont received a CPA Global Research Perspectives grant, the honorary title of senior scholar in Management at the University of California, Davis (2014), and was made a fellow of ANU's ANCAAR in 2017 for his contributions to audit research and emerging scholars. He serves as associate editor for Abacus and Accounting and Finance, on the editorial board of International Journal of Auditing and Pacific Accounting Review (PAR, of which he is a trustee), chaired the technical committee for financial accounting papers at AFAANZ conferences (2006-2009), was elected director of AFAANZ (2008), and served as New Zealand President of AFAANZ (2011-2014).