Gianfranco Siciliano

Responsibilities

Teaching courses of Financial Accounting, Auditing
Research on accounting quality and corporate governance, with a particular focus on family firms and private companies.
Master and Bachelor Thesis supervision

Gianfranco Siciliano's research focuses on international financial reporting and accounting quality, with particular attention to the economic consequences of accounting regulation and IFRS adoption in capital markets. A central strand of his work examines corporate governance and family firms, including how ownership structure shapes financial reporting quality, earnings management, cost behavior, and ESG disclosure. He is also active in the field of M&A, studying purchase price allocation and deal quality, as well as the interplay between CEO behavior and firms' innovation strategies. Across these areas, his agenda combines rigorous empirical methods with questions of direct relevance to standard-setters, investors, and managers.

International Financial Reporting · Accounting Regulation · Accounting Quality · Corporate Governance · Family Firms · M&A and Purchase Price Allocation · CEO Behavior and Innovation Strategies

Gianfranco Siciliano is an accounting scholar with international research and teaching experience across Europe, Asia, and the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in Accounting from Duke University and has held faculty positions at Bocconi University, the University of Texas at Dallas, and CEIBS (Shanghai). He currently teaches at Berner Fachhochschule (BFH) and LUISS Guido Carli in Rome.
His research spans international financial reporting, accounting regulation, corporate governance, family firms, and M&A, and has been published in leading journals including Management Science, Contemporary Accounting Research, and European Accounting Review. He is also a case-study author for Harvard Business Publishing and winner of the 2021 EFMD Case Writing Competition.
At BFH, he teaches Internal Audit, and Financial Accounting, and supervises Bachelor and Master theses. Across his career he has taught financial accounting, financial statement analysis, forensic accounting, and M&A at undergraduate, master, MBA, EMBA, and executive levels, consistently earning among the highest teaching evaluations at his institutions.

04.2026 – present External Lecturer, Institute for Applied Data Science and Finance (IADSF) Berner Fachhochschule (BFH), Bern, Switzerland
03.2026 – present Contract Lecturer and Research Affiliate, Department of Accounting and Corporate Finance LUISS Guido Carli, Rome, Italy
04.2019 – 02.2026 Assistant Professor, Finance and Accounting Department China Europe International Business School, Shanghai, China
02.2016 – 02.2017 Visiting Assistant Professor, Accounting Department (on leave from Bocconi University) University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), Richardson, USA
09.2012 – 03.2019 Assistant Professor, Accounting Department Bocconi University, Milan, Italy

2007-2013 Ph.D. in Accounting Duke University, USA
2007-2010 Master of Arts in Economics (MA) Duke University, USA
2003-2006 Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) Parma University (Italy)
1997-2001 Bachelor in Business Administration (cum Laude) Parma University (Italy)

"Eponymy, Reputation, ESG Reporting in Private Family Firms" (Prencipe, D'Angelo, Minichilli, Askheim, Siciliano)
"Who Speaks When the Future Is Uncertain? The Role of Ownership" (Radhakrishnan, Villalonga, Pierini, Siciliano)
"When Blood Leaves the Boardroom: Market Reactions to Family-to-Nonfamily CEO Transitions" (Pierini, Berkovitch, Siciliano)
"Who Decides What an Acquisition Is Worth? Ownership Type and Purchase Price Allocation" (Pierini, Villalonga, Siciliano)
"Whose Discovery Is It? CEO Legacy Incentives and R&D Externalization" (Radhakrishnan, Villalonga, Pierini, Siciliano)
"Succession Dynamics in Italian Private Family Firms" (Zellweger, Siciliano) in collaboration with CFB-HSG, University of St. Gallen