Business Commons^™

An Empirical Analysis Of Sentiment And Confidence Regarding Interest Rates In Disclosures Of Public Firms In The U.S. Fintech Sector, James J. Farley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation studied the channel of communication of 10-K and 10-Q financial reports and the effectiveness of relaying interest rate sentiment. 10-K financial reports relay information regarding a company’s financials on a yearly basis while 10-Q reports relay information on a quarterly basis. To study a newer industry of Fintech and how it may be affected by interest rates it was necessary to narrow Fintech to the United States and a coordinated public channel of communication using the 10-Q and 10-K financial reports. Fintech emerged as a relevant word and industry coming off the Great Recession of 2009. During the …

The Rise Of Text Analysis: Using Machine Learning To Explain The Variation In Going Concern Accuracy, Yimei Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Auditors are required to issue modified audit opinions if they have sufficient doubts about the client’s ability to continue as a going concern. These going concern opinions represent an important information resource for financial statement users to evaluate client performance, and are associated with a number of negative capital market outcomes (e.g. negative returns, increased cost of capital, etc.). Despite being used by capital market participants, going concern opinions are commonly plagued with Type I errors (false positive) and Type II errors (false negative), making them a particularly noisy measure. The purpose of this study is to determine whether machine …

Do Auditors Respond To Changes In Clients’ Analyst Coverage? Evidence From A Natural Experiment, Mohammad Alkhamees

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Prior research has established that analysts serve as an important monitor of managementand improve the quality of firms’ financial reporting. In this study, I utilize the natural experiment resulting from the mergers and closures of brokerage houses, to examine whether this exogenous change in firms’ information environment impacts the audit process. Specifically, I examine whether reductions in analyst coverage have an effect on auditor effort proxied by audit fees and audit report lag, as well as financial reporting quality, measured by future restatements. I find that client firms pay significantly higher audit fees following an exogenous reduction in analyst coverage …

Are All Pictures Worth 1,000 Words? An Investigation Of Fit Between Graph Type And Performance On Accounting Data Analytics Tasks, Shawn Paul Granitto

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The usefulness of accounting data is directly dependent on the presentation and interpretation of the data (DeSanctis and Jarvenpaa 1989; Brown-Liburd et al. 2015; Cao et al. 2015). While both corporate accounting and public accounting have a large focus on data analytics and visualizations, accountants in both fields have reported to have minimal experience creating visualizations and observe a growing use of visualizations within their role (Krumwiede 2019; Buchheit et al. 2020; Gibson et al. 2020). Vessey (1991) finds that the appropriateness of a visualization can impact a user’s decision-making performance. Although prior studies have provided suggestions of when to …

Managing Incomplete Data In The Patient Discharge Summary To Support Correct Hospital Reimbursements, Fadi Naser Eddin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The patient discharge summary is a document that conveys the patient's story to other healthcare practitioners, external users, and, most importantly from a financial perspective, health insurers. A defect or incompleteness in the patient's discharge summary will result in delays in the collection process through denial of the entire or partial reimbursement claim or, in the best-case scenario, delay until the discharge summary issue is resolved. The purpose of this project is to address the issue of the incompleteness of discharge summary from the perspective of healthcare providers, with the goal of understanding, diagnosing, and intervening in the research problem. …

Public Budgeting As Moral Dilemma, Ben Wroblewski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Government budget managers are responsible for the proper stewardship of public funds and facilitating the business transactions necessary to meet the public’s needs. Sometimes, during these decisions, managers can experience pressure to make an unethical decision. A better understanding of this issue can help organizations prevent misallocation of funds and adverse effects within the community. The problem is that the general pressure model lacks a framework to explain the decision-making process. Moral utility theory can provide insight into how people weigh or score choices with ethical considerations. This study found that government budget managers included their self-interests when experiencing tension …

The Use Of Data Analytic Visualizations To Inform The Audit Risk Assessment: The Impact Of Initial Visualization Form And Documentation Focus, Rebecca N. Baaske (Becca)

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although data analytic technologies provide auditors with powerful tools for identifying high-risk areas during an audit (Austin, Carpenter, Christ, and Nielson 2019), they are not a substitute for necessary interpretation and judgment (Brown-Liburd, Issa, and Lombardi 2015). A major barrier for making better use of data analytic techniques and tools is the skillset needed to make necessary interpretations and judgments based on data visualizations within the tool (Appelbaum, Kogan, and Vasarhelvi 2017; Earley 2015; PwC 2015). Default visualizations provided to auditors could be suboptimal in relation to the underlying data, which could limit auditors’ ability to identify anomalies without some …

The Effects Of Critical Audit Matter Recurrence And Reporting Treatment On Investors’ Information Processing, Judgments, And Decisions, Hilda E. Carrillo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A new auditor reporting standard requires auditors to disclose critical audit matters (CAMs) in the auditor’s report. CAMs highlight accounts or disclosures that involved especially challenging, subjective, or complex auditor judgment. As one of few audit-related disclosures, CAMs act as an important signal of qualitative aspects of recognized (i.e., items shown on the face of the financial statements) or disclosed (i.e., items shown in the footnotes of the financial statements) financial statement items. While certain accounts or disclosures will consistently rise to the level of a CAM, other accounts or disclosures may only rise to the level of a CAM …

Forensic Accounting Education, Practice, And Career Path In Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Alzahrane

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The various high-profile cases of financial fraud that threatened to or led to the downfall of high ranking companies have reinforced the need to equip accounting professionals with the skills necessary to detect and investigate fraud. This study aims to evaluate forensic accountants' effectiveness in Saudi Arabia in meeting the needs of the judicial system and their clients. The study also seeks to explore forensic accounting in depth through the opinions, thoughts, concerns, conceptualizations, and experiences of Saudi judges who are routinely involved in forensic accounting cases. These cases often require expert testimony (i.e., cases involving, but not limited to, …

Development Of Next-Generation, Fast, Accurate, Transferable, And Polarizable Force-Fields For Heterogenous Material Simulations, Adam E. Hogan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Theoretical modeling is extremely useful in guiding to experiment; however quantitatively accurate modeling of energy-relevant small molecule sorption at the heterogeneous interfaces present in metal-organic materials (MOMs) is currently challenging. MOMs are an emerging class of materials consisting of inorganic clusters and organic linkers that offer great potential in the areas of gas storage, gas separation, and catalysis due to the possibility of large surface areas, complex heterogeneous surfaces, and rational designability. Efficient chemical separations involving these materials could reduce the US’s total energy consumption by approximately 10 to 15%. In this dissertation, the parameterization of small molecules and metal …

Who Rises To The Top: An Investigation Of The Essential Skills Necessary For Partners Of Non-Big 4 Public Accounting Firms, Amanda K. Thompson-Abbott

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The public accounting industry will face several challenges in the upcoming years. One challenge is an aging workforce that will be retiring in large numbers. This shift will result in a shortage of partner-ready candidates. The second challenge involves rapid technological disruption that is predicted to change the skill sets needed for success. Both issues underscore the need to recruit and retain talent in the public accounting profession. Academic research has focused primarily on Big 4 firms, so this paper focused on non-Big 4 firms. This study used exploratory research to examine two questions: “What skills does it take to …

An Analysis Of The Antecedents And Consequences Of Robotic Process Automation In Accounting Functions., Aharon Yoki

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Robotic Process Automation (“RPA”) is a recently emergent technology that has exploded in popularity as firms seek to capitalize upon the marketing promise of cost reduction and improved efficiency. Yet, with this expansion of RPA, very little is known about the firms’ initial drivers, perceptions during implementation, and how outcomes align with initial expectations. RPA could displace and dramatically change the workforce, but it is unclear how employees will respond to the continuing spread of RPA. This study seeks to fill that important gap in the scholarly literature with an exploratory mixed-methods study. The first chapter is an extensive literature …

The Impact Of Tax Complexity On Foreign Direct Investment Before And After The 2008 Global Financial Crisis, Carlos G. Ramos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is an increasingly significant element of today’s global economy. Since the 1980s, global FDI flows have experienced impressive increments up until 2007. FDI flows decreased significantly during the years following the global financial crisis of 2008 and have not yet returned to pre-crisis levels. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, significant changes have occurred in the regulatory and international investment environments while complexity of national tax systems had steadily increased during the past century. This study analyzes the effect of national tax complexity on FDI before and after the 2008 global financial crisis. The Heckman selection …

Detecting Digitally Forged Faces In Online Videos, Neilesh Sambhu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We use Rossler’s FaceForensics dataset of 1004 online videos and their corresponding forged counterparts [1] to investigate the ability to distinguish digitally forged facial images from original images automatically with deep learning. The proposed convolutional neural network is much smaller than the current state-of-the-art solutions. Nevertheless, the network maintains a high level of accuracy (99.6%), all while using the entire FaceForensics dataset and not including any temporal information. We implement majority voting and show the impact on accuracy (99.67%), where only 1 video of 300 is misclassified. We examine why the model misclassified this one video. In terms of tuning …

The Complexity Of Governance And Internal Audit Independence, Lily Bi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Independence is a critical foundation of all internal audit functions and internal audit services. The Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) sets The International Standards for Professional Practice of Internal Auditing, which requires that internal audit functions maintain independence, and chief audit executives functionally report to the “board.” The term “board” is interpreted differently in different countries due to the country’s governance models. The diverse corporate governance models create different board structures and the CAE’s reporting relationship with the board. Additionally, the lack of regulatory mandate about internal audit created a reality that internal audit functions are positioned differently depending on …

The Financial And Nonfinancial Performance Measures That Drive Utility Abandonments And Transfers In The State Of Florida, Daniel Acheampong

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The down trending of investor-owned water and wastewater utilities and the continuous increase in utility abandonments and transfers within the regulatory environment motivated the study of investor-owned utilities, using samples from the state of Florida. The study determined the financial and nonfinancial drivers of utility andandonments and transfers. Using the NRRI and Acheampong et al. improved financial ratios, used in utility viability studies (liquidity ratio, leverage ratio, debt to equity ratio, profit trend ratio, growth and efficiency ratio, efficiency ratio, and the profitability ratio), the study identified sixteen nonfinancial performance measures under four categories (output measure, quality measures, owners’ equity …

Exploring The Disconnects Between Cpa Firms And Millennials As It Relates To Tax Preparation, Dustin Micah Grant

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Small Certified Public Accountant (CPA) firms are facing a demographic market shift as baby boomers leave the workforce and are replaced by millennials. Today, small CPA firms rely on tax services from baby boomers and older clients for the majority of revenue, but millennials now represent the largest percentage of the workforce. This growing disconnect suggests a potential issue for small CPA firms. The following research explores the issues and opinions of millennial-aged tax filers and partners in small CPA firms on compiling and filing individual federal income tax returns in the United States.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with both …

Cooperation In Community Colleges, Frederic S. Gore

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the mounting pressures on institutions of higher education to do more with limited resources, the opportunity to collaborate with other colleges has emerged as a viable tool to create efficiencies and obtain valuable knowledge otherwise unattainable by an institution, even if that collaboration takes place with a competing institution. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are critical to managing student information and college operations, but can be challenging for colleges to implement. Consortia present a unique solution to colleges to address gaps in their expertise and skills needed to achieve a successful ERP implementation. This study explores the factors that …

Two Essays On The Impact Of Cybersecurity Risk Management Examinations On Investor Perceptions And Decisions, Rebecca R. Perols

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the impact of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) recently adopted cybersecurity risk management examination on investor perceptions and decisions. The dissertation implements a two-essay approach.

Essay 1 examines the effect of voluntary disclosures of joint or separate provisioning of cybersecurity risk management examinations on investor perceptions and decisions, and whether these effects differ when a subsequent cybersecurity incident occurs. Conducting a 2 x 2 between-participants experiment, I find that the negative signal of a subsequent cybersecurity incident reverses investors’ positive perceptions of auditor competence and increases investors’ sensitivity to …

Are Transfer Pricing Disclosures Related To Tax Reporting Transparency? The Impact Of Auditor-Provided Transfer Pricing Services, Stephanie Y. Walton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this study I investigate whether managers’ voluntary disclosure of transfer pricing information in the 10-K is related to firms’ tax reporting transparency. Transfer pricing disclosures could be used to convey managers’ private information about risks and uncertainties underlying firms’ transfer pricing activities or alternatively be used to discount or disclaim these risks. Using several common proxies for tax reporting transparency, I find evidence that transfer pricing disclosures are generally associated with lower tax transparency, suggesting that these disclosures may be primarily opportunistic. However, when firms use their auditor for transfer pricing services, I find that these transfer pricing disclosures …

Intangible Capital: Culture Of Innovation And Its Impact On The Cash Flow Multiple, James Russell Gregory

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The definition for a culture of innovation (COI) is the perception of a company that prioritizes the advancement of new ideas that create value across all operations. On the face of it that seems a precious attribute for any company to nurture and exploit, but measuring and valuing a culture of innovation has proven elusive for corporations. There is a tendency to break down innovation into R&D, patents granted, and new product development and while these are all significant components of innovation a cultural definition is more encompassing of the entirety of a company and the financial results should be …

Two Essays On String Of Earnings Benchmarks, Yiyang Zhang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Essay 1 Abstract

Prior research indicates that equity markets assign a higher valuation to firms that sustain a string of earnings increases (earnings string) and a string of meeting or beating analysts’ earnings expectations (MBE string). However, to date, there is little evidence on the response of debt investors when firms sustain a long string of meeting/beating earnings benchmarks. This study fills the gap in the literature by analyzing the impact of sustaining an earnings string/MBE string on the cost of debt. I find evidence of a positive (negative) association between the length of the earnings string/MBE string and the …

Three Essays On Digital Annual Reports For Nonprofessional Investors: The Impacts Of Presentation Formats On Investment-Related Judgments And Decisions, Yibo Zhang (James)

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the impact of presentation formats on nonprofessional investors’ impressions of firm performance in the context of digital annual reports. The dissertation implements a three-essay approach.

Essay 1 examines whether the effect of positive/negative financial performance news on nonprofessional investors’ impressions of management and firm performance depends on whether the graphical display of that news is vivid or pallid. Conducting a 2 x 2 between-participants experiment with 470 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (M-Turk), I find that when the news is positive, presenting graphs vividly allows nonprofessional investors to have a more positive …

The Effect Of Corporate Social Responsibility Investment And Disclosure On Cooperation In Business Collaborations, Sukari Farrington

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I experimentally examine whether disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) investment facilitates cooperation in business collaborations. Business collaborations are essential for firms to maintain their competitive advantage. However, half of all ventures fail. A major reason for this high failure rate is a lack of cooperation among business collaboration partners, known as relational risk. Findings suggest that CSR disclosure leads to greater CSR investment, but does not result in an overall higher level of cooperation. However, CSR disclosure moderates the link between CSR investment and cooperation. When CSR investment is disclosed, cooperation is highest when both managers invest in CSR. …

The Effect Of Expanded Audit Report Disclosures On Users’ Confidence In The Audit And The Financial Statements, Peter Kipp

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I investigate how nonprofessional investors’ confidence in the financial statements and the audit report is influenced by the firm specific details of a critical audit matter (CAM) disclosure in conjunction with the description of the audit procedures engaged to address the CAM in the audit report. Using participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk as a proxy for nonprofessional investors in a 2x2 +1 (control) between-participants experiment manipulating CAM disclosure detail (Detailed/Generic) and the description of the audit procedures engaged to address the CAM (Detail/Generic) I find that greater detail in the description of the CAM results in higher confidence in …

Essays On The Tax Policy And Insider Trading, Han Shi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the first essay I examine the relation between firm advertising and tax aggressiveness. Advertising increases firm visibility in both the product and the financial market. While investors would appreciate more tax savings, they are aware of the negative impact of tax aggressiveness on consumers’ views of the firm and hence its competitive positions in the product market. We find that firms that spend more on advertising have fewer tax sheltering activities, lower book-tax differences, and higher cash effective tax rates. Specifically, an increase of 1% on Advertising_i,t (ADVGP_i,t), the firm pays an additional tax of $0.70 …

Applying The Theory Of Planned Behavior To Influence Auditors' Knowledge-Sharing Behavior, Xu Cheng

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study adopts the theory of planned behavior to understand and influence auditors’ knowledge-sharing behavior. Ajzen (1991) indicates that persuasive communications, such as belief-targeted messages, can be used as behavioral interventions to alter intentions and behaviors. Thus, this study develops and evaluates the effectiveness of behavioral interventions (belief-targeted messages) in encouraging auditors’ knowledge-sharing behavior. This study uses a 2×2 between-participants design. Arguments targeting behavioral beliefs and arguments targeting normative beliefs are manipulated. Consistent with expectations, the results of this study were that (1) auditors exposed to an intervention share more knowledge, compared to auditors not exposed to any interventions; (2) …

The Effect Of Presentation Format On Investor Judgments And Decisions: Does The Effect Differ For Varying Task Demands?, Kevin Agnew

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the efficacy of presenting footnotes information in alternative display formats on investors’ judgments and decisions. Non-professional investors play a significant role in the capital markets yet they do not always attend to information contained in footnote disclosures. As a result, nonprofessional investors systematically misprice firms and misallocate resources. Recognizing that increased mandatory and voluntary disclosures create additional challenges for non-professional investors, both the FASB and SEC have actively sought ways to increase the effectiveness of disclosures. I hypothesize that high display proximity, low signal-to-noise presentation formats can increase investors’ attention to and processing of footnote disclosures and …

Increasing Auditor Sensitivity To The Risk Of Fraudulent Financial Reporting: Assessing Incentives And Pressures On Top Management, Donald Wengler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The ability of auditors to detect fraud, including intentional material misstatements in earnings, remains key to the credibility of audit firms and confidence in capital markets. The PCAOB concludes from its most recent inspections of public company audits that auditors often fail to assess and respond to risks of material misreporting by management. In a behavioral experiment, this study concludes that auditors can increase sensitivity to management motivation to misreport by actively seeking to transform identified risk factors focused on the organization, into factors focused on top managers, and to evaluate whether these manager-focused risk factors represent incentives for personal …

Does The Format Of Internal Control Disclosures Matter? An Experimental Investigation Of Nonprofessional Investor Behavior, Amanuel Fekade Tadesse

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates whether the current lack of structure of internal control weakness disclosures (a narrative about the reliability of the financial reporting system) leads nonprofessional investors to make differential investment decisions. Using the non-accelerated filer (smaller public company) setting, where nonprofessional investors are likely to consume unaudited internal control reports in their investing judgments and decisions, I examine two facets of internal control disclosure formats: presentation salience and disaggregation of material weaknesses. A 2 x 2 between-participants behavioral experiment was conducted with internal control presentation salience (bulleted vs. in-text) and disaggregation level (a single material weakness vs. a combination …