Rate My Professor Karen Ton

Karen Ton, PhD, CPA, is an Associate Professor in the Accounting & Information Systems Department at Villanova University's School of Business. She earned both her Ph.D. in Accounting and B.S. in Business Administration from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. Prior to joining Villanova in 2022 as an Assistant Professor, Dr. Ton held faculty positions at the Goizueta Business School, Emory University, and the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Licensed as a Certified Public Accountant in California, she gained practical experience in assurance services and transaction services at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. In 2025, she was awarded tenure and promotion to Associate Professor, recognizing her research productivity and teaching excellence.

Dr. Ton's scholarship centers on financial reporting, auditing, and regulation, investigating the effects of regulatory interventions on reporting practices, audit quality, and stakeholder decision-making. Her publications feature in top-tier journals including The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, and Review of Accounting Studies. Key works encompass 'Do Shared Auditors Improve Audit Quality? Evidence from Banking Crises' (The Accounting Review, 2023), 'Does Auditor Style Influence Non-GAAP Earnings Disclosure?' (Contemporary Accounting Research, 2024), and 'Customer Shopping Behavior and the Persistence of Customer-Supplier Relationships' (The Accounting Review, 2025). With 129 citations documented on Google Scholar, her research advances understanding in these domains. Dr. Ton has received the Crystal Apple for Excellence in Undergraduate Business Education at Emory University and the Mary Pickford Foundation Doctoral Teaching Award at USC. She serves as Co-Chair of the American Accounting Association's Trueblood Seminars Committee for 2025-2026 and instructs undergraduate financial accounting courses.