Business Commons^™

Public Opinion Of The Sec’S Proposal For Mandatory Climate Disclosures, Isaac Blanchette

Honors Theses and Capstones

In 2022, the Security and Exchange Commission created a proposal that would make climate risk disclosures mandatory for publicly traded companies. This paper aims to understand how Congress is likely to vote on the proposal as well as how students at the University of New Hampshire perceive the proposal. Using publicly available comment letters made by members of Congress in response to the proposal and extrapolating the responses of the other representatives, it is unlikely that the proposal will have enough support to be ratified. However, a survey conducted with students at the University of New Hampshire showed that the …

A Study Of Public Accounting And Related Economic Concepts, Seth Gerus

Honors Theses

This thesis consists of several case studies relating to different topics within the world of accounting. These cases were completed as assignments within the thesis practicum class taught by Dr. Victoria Dickinson. Each case pertains to a different accounting-related topic, and topics include the fundamentals of accounting as well as recent events in the business world. The thesis also includes a five-week long case competition in which students were put into groups to present Audit, Tax, and Advisory strategies for companies headquartered in the United States. Each of these cases were completed during the course of the Fall 2020 and …

Insider Trading Enforcement And The Private Information Environment: Evidence From The Newman Ruling, Andrew T. Pierce

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I exploit a shock to U.S. insider trading law to investigate whether a reduction in the enforceability of tipper-tippee insider trading restrictions leads to changes in information parity among investors and the efficiency of price discovery. The December 2014 Federal Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in US v. Newman constrained enforcement by restricting the types of exchanges between managers and investors that trigger tipper-tippee insider trading liability. Following Newman, I find that Second Circuit hedge funds experienced a significant increase in their stock picking ability of Second Circuit stocks in terms of preempting future earnings announcement returns and future …

Bitcoin: Currency Of The Future Or Investment Property, Kelly Y. Yu

Undergraduate Honors Theses

We live in a digital age where almost every aspect of our lives is based on computerized information. In 2009, currency became digital in the form of Bitcoin. The existence of Bitcoin has brought a variety of obstacles to government agencies and regulators. Specifically, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has been debating the treatment of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin for tax reporting purposes. In March 2014, the IRS issued a notice classifying Bitcoin and other convertible virtual currencies as investment property, similar to stocks and bonds. The notice from the IRS provoked outrage from the Bitcoin community. This project …

An Effectiveness Review Of Section 404 Of The Sarbanes Oxley Act (2002), Christopher Francis Morelli

Honors Theses and Capstones

The accounting scandals that occurred in the early 2000s launched the current day regulations set fourth in the Sarbanes Oxley Act. The Sarbanes Oxley Act is comprised of several titles, all aimed to help eliminate financial accounting errors and the potential of fraud. Within this piece of legislation, there is one section that has created a lot of discussion. Section 404, which discusses the way in which disclosures of internal control deficiencies are handled, is the topic of this paper. In addition to a literature review of a research paper written by Sarah Rice and David Weber, this paper will …

Essays On Non-Gaap Earnings Disclosure, Hangsoo Kyung

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Essay1: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued new Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations (CDI) in 2010, relaxing enforcement of Regulation G and Regulation S-K. The nonbinding nature and opaque procedures behind interpretive guidance cast doubt as to whether SEC staff interpretations changed a firm's voluntary disclosure. In this paper, I find that firms more frequently disclose non-GAAP earnings after the issuance of new CDI, suggesting that nonbinding SEC staff interpretations influence corporate disclosure practice. Compared to the pre-CDI period, non-GAAP exclusions are of higher quality in the post-CDI period. The exclusion quality of firms who started to disclose non-GAAP …

Does Regulatory Scrutiny Change Investment Behavior? Evidence Of Suboptimal Portfolio Rebalancing After The Financial Crisis, Willie Dion Reddic

Business Administration - Dissertations

Insurers that show losses are expected to sell tax-free securities and replace them with taxable securities since they can no longer benefit from tax savings. However, rebalancing these portfolios after the financial crisis would entail recognizing additional losses during a time period when their financial performance was under stress and their industry was under increased scrutiny. I examine portfolio rebalancing behavior using the period after the financial crisis as a proxy for increased regulatory scrutiny. I predict and find that insurers with losses subsequent to the financial crisis were less likely to increase their ratio of taxable/nontaxable securities. Insurers may …

The Harmonization Of Chinese Accounting Standards With International Accounting Standards: An Empirical Evaluation, Songlan Peng

Theses and Dissertations

Using China as the case of a developing country, this study empirically evaluates whether the efforts made by China since the early 1990s to harmonize their domestic standards with IAS have been successful. Four research questions are addressed and eight hypotheses are developed to investigate the current level of harmonization and whether the extent of harmonization improves with the issuance of the most recent Chinese GAAP. Chinese 1992 GAAP, 1998 GAAP, and 2001 GAAP are reviewed and compared with IAS to evaluate de jure harmonization of Chinese GAAP with IAS (that is, harmonization in standards). Firms that issue both A …

Determinants Of Loan Losses In National Banks: Size, Regulation, And The Aicpa Model, Randy Marl Reed

Doctoral Dissertations

Because of recent failures, the AICPA Banking Committee has developed a normative model citing specific variables for auditors to use in bank audits. This research has examined that AICPA model.

In addition, the Auditing Principles Board has identified several areas of concern for auditing internal control structures. Research into size and regulation from other sources has indicated that both are significant modifiers of financial models. Regulations now require banks and holding companies of more than $500 million in assets to submit to an annual independent audit.

The primary purpose of this research was to determine whether the AICPA normative model …