Pensions

Earnings management

Financial accounting

Governance

Auditing

Critical accounting

Ethics

SMEs

Auctions

Market efficiency

His PhD thesis research analysed fair value pension accounting, pension risk, and pension plan funding. Iain has published papers covering issues including; institutional economics, accounting, ethics, pension management, fund performance and sovereign wealth.

He has attended and presented at a number of international conferences and seminars as well as being invited to present his work. Invited presentations include the Faculty of Actuaries, the Institute of Actuaries, the National Association of Pension Funds, the Pensions Research Accountant Group, and the North West Actuarial Society. In addition to this he has also been an invited panel presenter at the NAPF Annual Investment Conference.

Dr Clacher has also had a number of grant successes, with an £1895 seedcorn grant from Leeds University Business School to analyse deposit insurance in Europe (with Jens Hagendorff). A £10000 grant was awarded to analyse retirement decisions in the Thai Government Pension Fund (with David Hillier and Suntharee Lhaopadchan). He was also awarded a £5000 TQEF grant to develop a course for SAS programming in business research which will be introduced to postgraduate researcher training in 2010-2011. In addition to this he has been awarded a grants for £27,000 (Rotman ICPM) and £11,000 (The Actuarial Profession) to analyse pension fund solvency risks (with David Hillier and Mark Freeman) and £10,000 (with Ali Altanlar, Nick Wilson and Gianluca Veronesi) to analyse the impact of Regional Development Agencies on company formation and survival.

In addition to his academic activities Dr Clacher has also consulted to a number of different organisations including; The City of Corporation, The Work Foundation and The National Association of Pension Funds.