We investigate a key assumption underlying much of the experimental research in financial accounting that graduate business students are a good proxy for nonprofessional investors. To conduct our investigation, we categorize recent experi- mental studies in financial accounting, based on the relative level of integrative com- plexity inherent in each study’s task. We then conduct experiments using two tasks, one that is relatively low in integrative complexity and one that is relatively high in integrative complexity, and compare the responses of two groups of M.B.A. students and nonprofessional investors.