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Corporate Website Disclosures And Financial Reporting Quality, Nicholas Mueller Apr 2022

Corporate Website Disclosures And Financial Reporting Quality, Nicholas Mueller

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the relationship between corporate website disclosures and financial reporting quality. Using a sample of the S&P 500 and S&P 400 firms, a voluntary website disclosure score is created by identifying specific website disclosures. After controlling for website disclosure requirements imposed by U.S. stock exchanges, the results indicate that firms with greater website disclosures are associated with lower abnormal accruals and differential persistence of cash flows and operating accruals. Additionally, using the Chen, Miao, and Shevlin (2015) measures for disaggregation quality of financial statement items, the results suggest that the association between financial reporting quality and website disclosures …


Earnings Management Of Leaders And Laggards, Candice Roche Boucree Jul 2020

Earnings Management Of Leaders And Laggards, Candice Roche Boucree

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I examine whether earnings management varies by a firm’s life-cycle stage relative to its industry life-cycle stage. This relationship, measured as Leaders, Match, or Laggards, concerns strategic groups with different operating strategies. Leaders (Laggards) employ a pioneering (an imperfect imitation) strategy. Overall, I find evidence that Leaders engage in less earnings management than do Match firms. Specifically, Leaders (Laggards) engage in less (more) accruals-based earnings management (AEM) than do Match firms, and Leaders engage in less real-activities earnings management (RAM) than do Match firms. Within firm life-cycle stages, I find additional evidence …


The Relationship Between Audit Quality And Competition At The Intersection Of The Large And Small Audit Firm Markets, Jeanne-Claire Alyse White Mar 2018

The Relationship Between Audit Quality And Competition At The Intersection Of The Large And Small Audit Firm Markets, Jeanne-Claire Alyse White

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This paper examines the relationship between audit quality and several measures of spatial competition. Spatial competition is measured as the smallest absolute difference in audit fee market shares from an audit firm and its closest competitor. In this paper, spatial competition measures are referred to as competitive distances, and they are calculated within the large audit market (Big 4 only), within the small audit market (non-Big 4 only), and between the large and small audit markets. Audit market competition and its effect on audit quality has been an ongoing debate. On one side of the argument, competition may negatively impact …


The Economic Costs To Audit Firms Of Ethical Violations And The Resulting Pcaob Disciplinary Orders, Stephanie Ann Merrell Nov 2017

The Economic Costs To Audit Firms Of Ethical Violations And The Resulting Pcaob Disciplinary Orders, Stephanie Ann Merrell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This paper examines whether ethical violations committed by an audit partner and the public release of the resulting PCAOB disciplinary order affects the associated audit firms’ switching risk, audit fees and audit quality relative to other comparable audit firms. I examine the effects of ethical violations on audit firms affiliated with a sanctioned auditor (also referred to as affiliated audit firm or sanctioned auditor) at the city (office), MSA, state, regional, and national (firm) level in order to determine if there is a spill-over effect. My findings suggest that at no level in my analysis did the public disclosure of …


The Pricing Of Ipo Audit Expertise And Subsequent Issuer Underpricing, Jung Eun Park Jan 2017

The Pricing Of Ipo Audit Expertise And Subsequent Issuer Underpricing, Jung Eun Park

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

I examine the costs and benefits to the issuer of hiring an IPO auditor specialist in the U.S. Initial Public Offerings market. I quantify IPO auditor expertise at the market share level and the market concentration level and then I investigate the audit fees of IPO audit expertise and the issuer underpricing in the U.S. IPO market. I find that there are significant fee premiums when an audit firm is a national IPO audit specialist and when an audit office is a city IPO audit specialist. I also find that IPO specialist auditors reduce first-day issuer underpricing. These results are …


The Certifying Triangle Of Financial Reports, Dong Li Jan 2016

The Certifying Triangle Of Financial Reports, Dong Li

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This research provides theoretical, regulatory, and empirical underpinnings that financial reports are the joint representation of the certifying triangle (i.e., CEO-CFO-Auditor). This research also finds that replacement of the CEO tends to reduce the survival rate of the CFO with the firm, and vice versa; replacement of the CFO reduces the survival rate of the auditor, and vice versa. However, an association does not exist between the survival rate of the CEO and the auditor. Moreover, while a single realignment of the certifying triangle does not reduce the year-end ERC, a double (CEO-CFO) realignment significantly decreases the ERC. This negative …


Does The Pcaob Inspection Have An Effect On Audit Fees And Audit Quality?, Elizabeth Schwartzhoff Johnson Jan 2015

Does The Pcaob Inspection Have An Effect On Audit Fees And Audit Quality?, Elizabeth Schwartzhoff Johnson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

I investigate the effects of the issuance of the PCAOB Part II report on audit fees and audit quality. The PCAOB replaced the peer review auditor program with an independent inspection of audit firms. Upon completion of each inspection, the PCAOB issues inspection reports that include a public portion (Part I) of identified audit deficiencies, and most include a nonpublic portion (Part II) of identified quality control weaknesses which is not disclosed publicly unless the audit firm does not sufficiently complete remediation during the next 12 months. Upon issuance of the Part II report, I find that audit firms experience …


Ceo Compensation And Tax Loss Carrybacks, Pei-Yu Sun Jan 2015

Ceo Compensation And Tax Loss Carrybacks, Pei-Yu Sun

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Erickson, Heitzman, and Zhang’s (2013) results indicate that firms engage in tax-motivated loss recognition to offset previously recorded income. Since tax and financial income by design is linked (Guenther, Maydew, and Nutter 1997), net operating loss reporting can impose significant costs on CEOs who have to recognize similar losses for financial reporting purposes. As a result, firms must motivate the CEO to accelerate loss recognition if the firm expects to benefit from the cash inflows generated by the tax refund. In the current study, I examine whether CEO cash-based compensation increases to offset the potential negative costs that can arise …


Has The Fasb And Iasb's Shift Toward An Asset/Liability View Enhanced The Predictive Usefulness Of Roe?, Regina Cavalier Rosa Jan 2014

Has The Fasb And Iasb's Shift Toward An Asset/Liability View Enhanced The Predictive Usefulness Of Roe?, Regina Cavalier Rosa

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the past several decades, accounting standard setters have been gradually shifting financial reporting toward an asset/liability view, by rewriting the underlying conceptual framework and issuing accounting standards that reflect this view. The asset/liability view enhances comparability of a firm’s investment base to that of its peers, and thus enhances the comparability of a firm’s return of equity (ROE). This, in turn, increases the transparency with which firm-specific performance differs from its peers. Greater transparency would be expected to improve predictive usefulness, but would also place greater pressure on a firm to meet the performance of its peers. In the …


The Effect Of Innovation On Corporate Tax Avoidance, Peng Guo Jan 2014

The Effect Of Innovation On Corporate Tax Avoidance, Peng Guo

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A large body of literature examines the determinants of corporate tax avoidance. In this paper I examine a new determinant of tax avoidance: innovation. Firms with more innovation generate more patents. Due to information asymmetry between the managers of the firm and tax authorities, firms have considerable discretion in choosing which country the patent revenue is generated in. In this study, I predict that firms with more patents will choose to attribute the revenue from those patents to countries with low tax rates. Using a relatively new data source which contains data on patents, I find evidence consistent with my …


The Effect On Earnings Persistence And The Market's Reaction To The Alignment Of Employee And Customer Relations With Competitive Strategy, Robert Stephen Hogan Jan 2013

The Effect On Earnings Persistence And The Market's Reaction To The Alignment Of Employee And Customer Relations With Competitive Strategy, Robert Stephen Hogan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Prior literature suggests that a focus on employee and customer relations alone improves financial performance. However, I find that a focus on employee and customer relations alone is not related to higher earnings persistence, but rather I hypothesize and find that the alignment of employee and customer relations with competitive strategy is related to higher earnings persistence. I further explore this relation by examining the contextual environment in which the firm operates. I consider the moderating variables of firm size, leverage, growth, and corporate governance and find that alignment impacts the persistence of earnings for leverage and governance but not …


Consistency Between Earnings Forecasts And Stock Recommendations : The Effect Of Political Connections, Elio Alfonso Jan 2013

Consistency Between Earnings Forecasts And Stock Recommendations : The Effect Of Political Connections, Elio Alfonso

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Financial analysts’ earnings forecasts are more consistent with stock recommendations when their earnings forecasts are more accurate (Loh and Mian 2006, Ertimur et al. 2007). This suggests that analysts use other information in their private valuation models in addition to earnings forecasts especially when earnings have greater uncertainty. Recent studies show that political connections are important for firm valuation and are associated with future positive returns and future positive operating performance (Faccio 2006, Cooper et al. 2010). In this study, I examine how a firm’s political connections affect stock recommendation informativeness as well as the efficiency with which analysts translate …


The Effect Of Audit Market Concentration On Audit Pricing And Audit Quality : The Role Of The Size Of The Audit Market, John Daniel Eshleman Jan 2013

The Effect Of Audit Market Concentration On Audit Pricing And Audit Quality : The Role Of The Size Of The Audit Market, John Daniel Eshleman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The GAO has recently expressed concern that audit market concentration (i.e., not client concentration) could result in greater audit fees and lower audit quality. However, the extant literature finds that local audit markets with higher concentration have lower audit fees (Numan and Willekens 2012) and fewer accounting restatements (Newton et al. 2013). In this study, I show that the effect of audit market concentration on the level of audit fees depends on the size of the audit market (i.e., the size and/or number of clients in the local geographic area). When the audit market contains fewer clients and/or those clients …


Income Classification Shifting And Financial Analysts’ Forecasts, Shanshan Pan Jan 2013

Income Classification Shifting And Financial Analysts’ Forecasts, Shanshan Pan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Income classification shifting involves opportunistically misclassifying core expenses into nonrecurring items in order to boost core earnings. Recent studies have documented large sample evidence of its existence (e.g. McVay 2006; Fan et al.,2010; Barua et al.,2010). Managers engage in income classification shifting because they believe the market in general and financial analysts in particular focus on core earnings. If financial analysts are experts in forecasting permanent earnings, they should be expected to identify reported core earnings that have been inflated through classification shifting and revise their future earnings forecast accordingly. Consistent with my prediction, I find that given the same …


Stock Liquidity, Price Informativeness, And Accruals-Based Earnings Management, Jing Fang Jan 2012

Stock Liquidity, Price Informativeness, And Accruals-Based Earnings Management, Jing Fang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

We examine the effect of stock liquidity on accruals-based earnings management. Finance literature suggests that stock liquidity leads to price efficiency. If prices are efficient, more future earnings should be reflected in current prices. Therefore, gain from shifting accruals across periods should be low and managers should have less incentive to manage earnings. We find that higher stock liquidity is associated with higher future earnings response coefficient and lower accruals-based earnings management. Our finding has important implication for the decline in accruals-based earnings management during 2001-2005 documented in prior study. Our additional trend analysis suggests that instead of SOX and …


Accounting Comparability, Audit Effort And Audit Outcomes, Joseph Hongbo Zhang Jan 2012

Accounting Comparability, Audit Effort And Audit Outcomes, Joseph Hongbo Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The paper investigates the usefulness of accounting comparability for audit engagement. Comparability among peer firms in the same industry reflects the similarity and the relatedness of firms’ operating environment and accounting reporting. From two perspectives of “inherent business risk” and “external information efficiency”, comparability is helpful for auditors to assess client business risk and lowers the cost of information acquisition, processing, and testing. For a given firm, I hypothesize that the availability of information about comparable firms is helpful for auditors by improving audit accuracy and audit efficiency. The comparability proxy is based on a variety of measures including pair-wise …


Experimental Study Of Lean Blowout With Hydrogen Addition In A Swirl-Stabilized Premixed Combustor, Shengrong Zhu Jan 2012

Experimental Study Of Lean Blowout With Hydrogen Addition In A Swirl-Stabilized Premixed Combustor, Shengrong Zhu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Lean premixed combustion is widely used to achieve a better compromise between nitric oxides emissions and combustion efficiency. However, combustor operation near the lean blowout limit can render the flame unstable and lead to oscillations, flashback, or extinction, thereby limiting the potential range of lean combustion. Recent interest in integrated gasification combined cycle plants and syngas combustion requires an improved understanding of the role of hydrogen on the combustion process. Therefore, in present study, combustion of pure methane and blended methane-hydrogen has been conducted in a swirl stabilized premixed combustor. The measurement techniques implemented mainly include particle image velocimetry, CH*/OH* …


Auditor Tenure And Audit Quality, Li Zheng Brooks Jan 2011

Auditor Tenure And Audit Quality, Li Zheng Brooks

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

I propose that audit quality is likely to increase with audit firm tenure due to a Learning Effect and decrease with audit firm tenure due to a Bonding Effect. The net impact of these two countervailing forces over audit firm tenure dictates whether the relationship between audit firm tenure and audit quality is a concave, convex, or linear function of audit firm tenure. When the Bonding Effect dominates the Learning Effect in the later (earlier) years of tenure, then audit quality is a concave (convex) function of audit firm tenure. Adopting the quadratic model to empirically estimate the audit firm …


Optimization Of Adult Multipotent Stromal Cell-Bioscaffold Interactions For Tissue Regeneration With Bioreactors, Lin Xie Jan 2011

Optimization Of Adult Multipotent Stromal Cell-Bioscaffold Interactions For Tissue Regeneration With Bioreactors, Lin Xie

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Adult multipotent stromal cells (MSCs) in combination with biocompatible scaffolds may augment well-established medical and surgical techniques. Pre-implantation cell loading and viability on scaffold carriers followed by in vitro differentiation and extracellular matrix (ECM) formation contribute to the efficacy of in vivo tissue formation. Given the specificity of the parameters for each cell-scaffold construct, it is vital to assess the relative potential of various combinations to select the best option for various clinical needs. High demand for equine and human bone regeneration especially non-union fracture repair is still largely unaddressed. Therefore osteogenesis potential of both equine and human MSCs engrafted …


Accurals Quality And Price Synchronicity, Joseph Atkins Johnston Jan 2009

Accurals Quality And Price Synchronicity, Joseph Atkins Johnston

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the relation between accruals quality and price synchronicity, a measure of the relative amount of firm-specific information reflected in price. Higher accruals quality imply better quality earnings news, hence, more firm-specific information is incorporated into price for firms with higher accruals quality. More firm-specific information reduces price synchronicity, hence, we hypothesize a negative relation between accruals quality and price synchronicity. On the other hand, literature shows that accruals quality reduces idiosyncratic volatility which tends to be negatively correlated with price synchronicity. If the latter effects dominate the relation between accruals quality and price synchronicity, we should observe …


Voluntary Disclosures In Mergers And Acquisitions, Scott Allen Wandler Jan 2007

Voluntary Disclosures In Mergers And Acquisitions, Scott Allen Wandler

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Whenever there is a merger between two publicly held companies in the form of a stock transaction, the companies must provide a proxy-prospectus to their shareholders with enough information to vote on the proposed merger. The proxy-prospectus contains mandatory pro forma financial statements as if the firms had merged as of the end of the previous year. Occasionally, the proxy-prospectus contains voluntary, forward-looking information, such as projected earnings per share (EPS) or price-to-earnings (PE) ratios of the combined firm. There are two reasons that management may provide this voluntary forward-looking information: 1) management could be providing an optimistic view of …


Rate Regulation And Earnings Management: Evidence From The U.S. Electric Utility Industry, Joseph Ben Omonuk Jan 2007

Rate Regulation And Earnings Management: Evidence From The U.S. Electric Utility Industry, Joseph Ben Omonuk

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Although accounting research continues to focus on earnings management, few studies have done so within the context of a single industry, and only one study to date (Paek 2001) has investigated this phenomenon within the context of U.S. rate-regulated electric utilities. Most utilities are viewed as natural monopolies, and therefore are subjected to rate regulation. These firms are permitted to earn a prescribed rate of return on an approved rate base. Although utilities are subjected to greater scrutiny than non-regulated public companies, regulatory restraint may create incentives to manage earnings (Healy and Whalen 1999), especially coincident with a utility’s request …


Do Accruals Exacerbate Information Asymmetry In The Market?, Sonia Wasan Jan 2006

Do Accruals Exacerbate Information Asymmetry In The Market?, Sonia Wasan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

A considerable body of evidence, both archival and experimental, suggests that accounting accruals are heterogeneously interpreted by investors. In this study, I examine whether the information asymmetry among investors arising from this heterogeneous interpretation, implied in these empirical results, affects transactions costs in the form of the bid-ask spread and its adverse selection component. I examine this impact both, in general, for all trading activity occurring for a firm over a continuous flow of information during the year and around the first release of accrual information for each quarter. The results of the study provide empirical evidence of a positive …


Using The Fasb's Qualitative Characteristics In Earnings Quality Measures, Abhijit Barua Jan 2006

Using The Fasb's Qualitative Characteristics In Earnings Quality Measures, Abhijit Barua

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this study, I develop a measure of earnings quality by using qualitative characteristics of financial statement information specified in the Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts (SFAC) No. 2 (FASB 1980). I derive a summary measure of earnings quality by applying factor analysis on fifteen variables representing different components of two primary dimensions of earnings quality: relevance and reliability. I then test the validity of the earnings quality construct by examining whether the construct reflects decision usefulness that is operationalized in two ways: value relevance and cost of capital analyses. I provide empirical evidence suggesting that the earnings quality construct …


Do Speculative Short Sellers Detect Earnings Management?, Yan Zhang Jan 2004

Do Speculative Short Sellers Detect Earnings Management?, Yan Zhang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This paper examines empirically whether sophisticated speculative short sellers can detect earnings management by targeting stocks with large income-increasing discretionary accruals and high total accruals. Prior research indicates that total accruals are overpriced and this overpricing is largely attributable to the mispricing of discretionary accruals. Recent studies show that neither auditors nor financial analysts utilize information in accruals. Using samples of 11,537 firm-quarter observations and 5,118 firm-year observations for 1,146 12/31 non-financial NYSE firms from 1992 to 1999, I find supporting evidence those speculative short sellers can detect earnings management using financial accounting information disclosed in 10-Q and 10-K report. …


The Effect Of The Implicit Theory Of Integrity On An Internal Auditor's Asessment Of Management Fraud Risk, Stephanie F. Watson Jan 2004

The Effect Of The Implicit Theory Of Integrity On An Internal Auditor's Asessment Of Management Fraud Risk, Stephanie F. Watson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this research project is to determine whether the implicit theory of integrity, a theory from the social psychology literature that predicts how social judgments and decisions are made, can explain internal auditors’ decisions. The implicit theory (Dweck and Leggett 1988) states that there are two types of people: (1) entity theorists and (2) incremental theorists. Entity theorists form strong inferences from observed behavior that are used to predict future behavior. Incremental theorists, on the other hand, do not infer characteristics from behavior, and therefore, do not attempt to predict future behavior. In an internal auditing context, the …


The Effect Of Program Commitment On The Degree Of Participative Congruence And Managerial Performance In A Budgeting Setting, Kevin T. Breaux Jan 2004

The Effect Of Program Commitment On The Degree Of Participative Congruence And Managerial Performance In A Budgeting Setting, Kevin T. Breaux

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this research endeavor is to investigate the effect that the degree of participative congruence has on the relationship between program commitment and managerial performance. The degree of participative congruence (Clinton and Hunton 2001) is a new measure of participation designed to determine the amount of congruence between the perceived need for participation and the degree of participation allowed. This study used a questionnaire to evaluate the antecedents of and effects of the degree of participative congruence (DPC) in a budgeting setting. In order to investigate these effects, the questionnaire was mailed to a sample of 1,500 AICPA …


Internal Revenue Service Restructuring And Reform Act Of 1998: A Test Of New Public Management, William Meriwether Vandenburgh Jan 2004

Internal Revenue Service Restructuring And Reform Act Of 1998: A Test Of New Public Management, William Meriwether Vandenburgh

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The enactment of the 1998 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Reform Act resulted directly from perceived lapses in the federal taxation administration, which was publicly highlighted in Congressional hearings. Congress reacted by fundamentally altering the IRS’s implementation of the Internal Revenue Code (for the first time since 1952). The Joint Committee on Taxation noted that the overall objective of the 1998 IRS Reform Act was to have “a well-run IRS [which] is critical to the operation of our tax system.” From a public administration paradigm, the IRS moved from a traditional tax management methodology to a New Public Management (NPM) methodology. …


Agronomic And Molecular Characterization Of Louisiana Native Spartina Alterniflora Accessions, Alicia Beatriz Ryan Jan 2003

Agronomic And Molecular Characterization Of Louisiana Native Spartina Alterniflora Accessions, Alicia Beatriz Ryan

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Coastal erosion and wetland deterioration are serious and widespread problems affecting Louisiana’s coastal zone. The application of agronomic and molecular techniques for improving crop species is well documented. However, these have not been routinely applied to species of ecological and environmental value. Spartina alterniflora is used extensively for shoreline protection and tidal marsh restoration because of its aggressive spreading habit and tolerance to salinity. The progress of marsh revegetation projects is limited by the costs and labor associated with vegetative propagation of Spartina. Hence, a breeding program was initiated to develop improved smooth cordgrass accessions with superior seed producing ability …


The Impact Of Institutional Stock Ownership On A Firm's Earnings Management Practice: An Empirical Investigation, Santanu Mitra Jan 2002

The Impact Of Institutional Stock Ownership On A Firm's Earnings Management Practice: An Empirical Investigation, Santanu Mitra

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines whether institutional investor shareholdings inhibit firm managers from engaging in earnings management practice. It investigates the empirical association between discretion/flexibility available to managers in managing abnormal non-cash working capital accruals and institutional stock ownership for a sample of 386 New York Stock Exchange firms over a period of 8 years, from 1991 through 1998. The differential institutional influence on the level of accrual management of firms having different information environment, S&P 500 versus non S&P 500, is also examined to see whether the difference in information environment of these two sets of firms has any effect on …