Virtual Workshops

PART A: Friday, October 9, 2026 – 10:00 AM (Central Daylight Time, US)

PART B: Friday, October 16, 2026 – 10:00 AM (Central Daylight Time, US)

Topic: Why Accounting? Origins, Evolution, and Implications for Development

Speaker: Sudipta Basu, Temple University

Topic: Accounting is one of humanity's oldest technologies, yet most empirical research treats it as a feature of modern, machine-readable economies. This two-session workshop steps back to ask foundational questions: Why was accounting invented? Where and when did it first appear, and what did access to it change? Why did double-entry bookkeeping emerge thousands of years later, and what made it superior to what came before? Drawing on archaeological data from Mesopotamia, a cross-country cross-time ethnographic sample, and a working paper on the origins of double-entry, the speaker argues that the history of accounting is directly relevant to development today—particularly for rural economies where literacy and numeracy are limited and simple, well-designed accounting systems could meaningfully improve decision-making among the poor. A secondary aim is to introduce ADF participants to archaeological, ethnographic, experimental, and neuroscientific methods that accounting researchers rarely use but that open promising avenues for interdisciplinary research.

Workshop organizers:

Marcela Aguilar, kma6@rice.edu

Fred Asante, faa48@cornell.edu

Samuel Chang, samuel.chang@chicagobooth.edu