Shyam Sunder, the James L. Frank Professor of Accounting, Economics and Finance at the Yale School of Management, has been named president-elect of the American Accounting Association (AAA). His three-year term will begin in August 2006.

Sunder is a leading accounting theorist and experimental economist. Using zero-intelligence traders to explore the structural properties of financial markets, he pioneered the use of experimental methods in financial economics and macroeconomics. The author of four books, co-editor of two more books and with more than 100 articles published in such premier journals as Accounting Horizons, Accounting Review, Computational Economics, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance, among others, Sunder in an influential and innovative thinker. His CapLab software is used in many colleges and universities to teach financial decision-making, according to the Hindustan Times.

His current areas of research, as indicated on his Yale web site, include: Contract Theory of Accounting and Control; Minimal Rationality Economics; Experimental Research I Asset Markets and Monetary Theory; Time Dimension and Management of Resources; Statistical Theory of Valuation; Strategic Financial Decision Making and Electronic Commerce. Earlier this year he was named Honorary Research Director of the Yale-GLIM Management Research Center at the Great Lakes Institute of Management, Channai, in a plan to help build world-class management research capacity in India.

A native of Dhankaur in Uttar Pradesh, India, Sunder is only the third foreign-born professor elected to lead the AAA. The AAA is the premier forum for scholarly interchanges in accounting. It promotes worldwide excellence in accounting education, research, and practice.