Digital Commons Network^™

Double Trouble? Irs’S Attention To Financial Accounting Restatements, Zackery D. Fox, Ryan Wilson

Faculty Publications

We examine whether the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) uses public information to obtain qualitative signals regarding the quality of firms’ financial information or management integrity. Using the procurement of public information as a proxy for IRS attention, we test whether public signals of poor information quality (restatements) lead to an increase in IRS attention. To begin, we document that the IRS is both more likely and quicker to acquire public filings announcing a restatement than any other filing of the firm. Furthermore, we examine instances in which the IRS is more likely to learn of a restatement and find an …

Discussion Of ‘The Effect Of Changes In Income Shifting On Affiliate Managers’ Internal Reporting Decisions, Zackery D. Fox, Ryan J. Wilson

Faculty Publications

Klassen and Valle Ruiz (hereafter KVR) investigate an interesting question that has not been explored in existing research. Specifically, they look at the effect of a change in income shifting strategy on affiliate managers’ internal reporting choices. The paper adds to a growing category of the tax accounting literature examining the consequences of multinational enterprises (MNEs) tax-motivated income shifting for various stakeholders. KVR turn their focus within the firm by testing whether distortions caused by tax-motivated income shifting alter affiliate managers’ internal reporting behavior.

Free Public Lands Admission For Children And Spillovers In Family Recreation, Jocelyn S. Wikle, Camilla Hodge

Faculty Publications

This study evaluated the Every Kid in a Park program to understand recreation and the contextual interaction between family resources, race, and recreation costs in families with young children. Using a large, nationally representative data sample from the American Time Use Survey (N = 5,119), we analyzed changes over time in recreation patterns of different socioeconomic groups before and after the initiation of the Every Kid in a Park program of the United States National Park Service. We found that free admission corresponded with overall increased frequency of hiking with a child for individuals in affected households. Changes in hiking …

Challenges Of Ecological Momentary Assessments To Study Family Leisure: Participants’ Perspectives, Kelly D. Chandler, Camilla Hodge, Kara Mcelvaine, Ericka J. Olschewski, Karen K. Melton, Pascal Deboeck

Faculty Publications

Scholars have documented the research tradeoffs of using ecological momentary assessments (EMA) to study daily life. Less is known about participants’ perspectives. The aim of this research note was to delineate the challenges of participating in a 14-day EMA study of family leisure described by 41 individuals (mothers, fathers, and adolescents) from 14 families to inform future family leisure studies using EMA. Participants identified three potential challenges: repetitive questions, inconvenient signals, and short response windows. Despite these challenges, the majority of participants indicated that they would recommend a similar study to others. The reality that so many families feel squeezed …

Experience Design In Leisure And Recreation Curriculum, Madie Neeley, Sydney Burgess, Mat D. Duerden, Neil Lundberg

Faculty Publications

Experience design is a term that has risen to the forefront in a variety of professional fields and has relevance for the field of park and recreation. Park and recreation professionals are primarily focused on providing experiences and thus could naturally consider themselves experienced designers. Surprisingly, experience design is not a topic often discussed within park and recreation publications or curriculum. This absence is at least in part attributable to the fact that experience design is an emerging field that has grown independently out of multiple disciplines. Consequently, the fields of park and recreation and experience design overlap in a …

Preparer Opposition And Strategic Implementation Of Governmental Accounting Standards: Evidence From Public Pension Accounting Reform, Abigail Allen, Reining C. Petacchi

Faculty Publications

Widely acknowledged as one of the most controversial standards in governmental accounting, GASB 67/68 radically altered both the recognition and measurement for defined benefit public pensions. The standards require the recognition of previously only disclosed unfunded pension liabilities and increase the magnitude of reported pension liabilities by requiring the partial incorporation of a market-based discount rate. While the recognition proposal was unaltered from its initial conception to the final standards, the discount rate proposal was significantly attenuated after the initial proposal met with unanimous preparer opposition. Accordingly, we examine what incentives drive preparer lobbying positions, whether such lobbying is aligned …

Relevance Of Accounting Research (Roar): Ratings Of Abstracts By Accounting Professionals, F. Greg Burton, Scott L. Summers, T. Jeffrey Wilks, David A. Wood

Faculty Publications

The relevance of academic accounting research to practice has been frequently discussed in the accounting academy, yet very little data has been put forth in these discussions. We create relevance of accounting research (ROAR) scores by asking accounting professionals to read and evaluate the titles and abstracts of every article published in 12 leading accounting journals for the years 2016 to 2018, inclusive. These scores allow for an evidence-based evaluation and discussion of how academic accounting research is perceived by accounting professionals. The scores also allow us to identify the articles, authors, journals, and accounting topic areas that are perceived …

The Relevance Of Non-Income Tax Relief*, Michael S. Drake, Ryan V. Hess, Jaron H. Wilde, Braden M. Williams

Faculty Publications

Governments regularly offer non-income tax relief to attract business investment. However, it is unclear whether or how markets impound information about the relief into security prices. We use novel data from retrospective public records to examine the information content of non-income tax relief. We predict and find that the receipt and magnitude of this relief are both strongly associated with recipients’ future accounting performance and future abnormal returns. We further find that abnormal returns associated with the relief cluster around future earnings information events. In combination, this evidence suggests that non-income tax relief is value-relevant but is incorporated into prices …

Brokerage Relationships And Analyst Forecasts: Evidence From The Protocol For Broker Recruiting, Braiden Coleman, Michael S. Drake, Joseph Pacelli, Brady Twedt

Faculty Publications

We offer novel evidence on how the nature of brokerage-client relationships can influence the quality of equity research. We exploit a unique setting provided by the Protocol for Broker Recruiting to examine whether relaxed broker noncompete agreement enforcement generates spillover effects on sell-side analysts. Entry into this agreement reassigns ownership of the client relationship from the brokerage to individual brokers, potentially generating a greater standard of care. Using a generalized difference-in-differences research design, we provide evidence consistent with brokers reducing pressure on analysts to produce optimistic research following protocol entry. This effect is concentrated among less experienced and non-All Star …

Social Media Analysts And Sell‑Side Analyst Research, Michael S. Drake, James R. Moon Jr., Brady J. Twedt, James D. Warren

Faculty Publications

We examine how research posted by “social media analysts” (SMAs)—individuals posting equity research online via social media investment platforms—is related to research subsequently produced by professional sell-side equity analysts. Using data from Seeking Alpha, we find that the market reaction to sell-side analyst research is substantially reduced when the analyst research is preceded by the report of an SMA, and that this is particularly true of sell-side analysts’ earnings forecasts. We further find that this effect is more pronounced when SMA reports contain more decision-useful language, are produced by SMAs with greater expertise, and relate to firms with greater retail …

A Tale Of Two Index Funds: Full Replication Vs. Representative Sampling*, Travis Dyer, Nicholas Guest

Faculty Publications

We examine the two approaches used by equity index funds to track their benchmark index. The first, full replication, mimics the index with exactness. The second, representative sampling, holds a subset of the index. We find that samplers trade 3-4 times more, have 30-50% higher expenses and fees, and earn 50-70 basis points lower annual returns, which is substantial given index funds’ mandate to limit tracking error to a few basis points. Besides higher expenses and transaction costs, poor stock picking also seems to contribute to samplers’ return underperformance. Overall, our analyses suggest representative sampling is associated with underperformance.

Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me: The Long-Term Impact Of Arthur Andersen’S Demise On Partners’ Audit Quality*, Feng Guo, Ling Lei Lisic, Jeffrey Pittman, Timothy Seidel, Mi Zhou, Ying Zhou

Faculty Publications

Although recent evidence suggests that individual audit partners explain a substantial portion of the variation in audit quality proxies, much less is known about what determines an audit partner’s quality. Psychology and behavioral economics theories hold that an individual’s experiences can have enduring impacts on subsequent behavior. We examine whether auditors’ direct exposure to Arthur Andersen’s collapse has a long-term impact on the quality of their audits. Our evidence implies that audit partners who directly experienced Andersen’s demise impose stricter monitoring evident in their clients exhibiting a lower propensity for misstatements and small profits, and paying higher audit fees. Importantly, …

Deconstructing Narratives About Artistic Mastery In Art Education, Mark Graham

Faculty Publications

A recurring challenge for art educators is how to include Black voices within the art curriculum. This challenge seems ever more relevant as a pandemic underlined the inequalities and injustices within our culture and society. A critical question for many White visual arts educators is: How do I, as a White educator, bring important issues of race, privilege, ideology, gender, and anti-racism into the art classroom? How can I help students to understand Whiteness as a cultural text and set about destabilizing White identity? How does one make space for an antiracist pedagogy? One way to begin conversations about these …

Aplicaciones De Los Estudios De Disponibilidad Léxica, Orlando Alba

Faculty Publications

Este artículo intenta contribuir a un mejor conocimiento del componente léxico del español dominicano en las siguientes áreas: a) el valor de la escolaridad y de la edad como factores que favorecen la presencia de anglicismos, b) el alcance de las distinciones diafásicas, y c) el reconocimiento del léxico distintivo del país. Con ese propósito, se trabajó con datos proporcionados por dos grupos de escolares de diferentes edades: 11 y 19 años, respectivamente. Por otra parte, se ofrece un análisis general del problema de la sinonimia en el contexto de la disponibilidad léxica de los dominicanos.

Increase Student Engagement In Online Writing Environments, Jonathan Balzotti, Jason K. Mcdonald, Kevin Haws, Amy Allen Rogers, Matthew J. Baker

Faculty Publications

This case study explores a type of educational simulation, an alternative reality game we call a playable case study (PCS), and how its use influenced student engagement in an online writing classroom. The goal of the simulation was to help students create professional communication artifacts and experience real-world professional communication situations. This article reports the effectiveness of the playable case study as a tool specifically for online writing instruction (OWI). The context of our research was a PCS called Microcore. Acting as interns for a company, students are asked to investigate a serious problem that occurs and present a solution …

Regional Patterns In Prevelar Raising, Joseph A. Stanley

Faculty Publications

Prevelar raising is the raising of trap and dress vowels before voiced velars. While bag and beg raising have been described in Canada, the Upper Midwest, and the Pacific Northwest, an in-depth investigation of their distribution across North America is lacking, especially for beg. Using an online survey distributed to over 5,000 participants via Reddit (which skews toward younger, White males) and ordinary kriging for spatial interpolation, this study finds that prevelar raising is more widespread than previously reported: bag raising is found in much of the North and the Upper Midwest, and beg raising is far more variable and …

Microcore: Using Online Playable Cases To Increase Student Engagement In Online Writing Environments, Jon Balzotti, Kevin Haws, Amy A. Rogers, Jason K. Mcdonald, Matt Baker

Faculty Publications

This case study explores a type of educational simulation, an alternative reality game we call a playable case study (PCS), and how its use influenced student engagement in an online writing classroom. The goal of the simulation was to help students create professional communication artifacts and experience real-world professional communication situations. This article reports the effectiveness of the playable case study as a tool specifically for online writing instruction (OWI). The context of our research was a PCS called Microcore. Acting as interns for a company, students are asked to investigate a serious problem that occurs and present a solution …

"The Working World Is A Minefield": Counterstories Of Job Loss, Rachel Collier Murdock, Matt Baker, Stacy Tye-Williams

Faculty Publications

This study examines narratives told by employees who experienced involuntary job loss. Results expand on previous narrative research investigating the American Dream master narrative and job loss as related to the neoliberal claim that those who work hard will be successful. The study investigated the master narrative’s implications for job loss that if someone loses their job, they must be either flawed or a bad worker. Contributions include a new redeemed-resolved identity construction by individuals who narrated job loss as an opportunity to correct some flaw in either their character or work life and to emerge a better, changed worker. …

The Sticks Of Judah And Joseph: Reflections On Defending The Kingdom, Joseph M. Spencer

Faculty Publications

I wish to pursue two tasks simultaneously in this essay. First, in line with its title, I will address a very old matter of interpretation. I aim to explain as definitively as possible how to make sense of the relationship between Ezekiel 37:15–19, with its talk of the sticks of Judah and Joseph, and the claims of the Restoration, which include somehow connecting the stick of Joseph to the Book of Mormon. Second, in line with the subtitle of this essay, I wish to draw a crucial lesson from the history of how Latter-day Saints have dealt with this issue …

Optimal Illiquidity, John Beshears, James J. Choi, Christopher Clayton, Christopher Harris, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

We calculate the socially optimal level of illiquidity in an economy populated by households with taste shocks and present bias (Amador, Werning, and Angeletos 2006). The government chooses mandatory contributions to respective spending/ savings accounts, each with a different pre-retirement withdrawal penalty. Penalties collected by the government are redistributed through the tax system. When naive households have heterogeneous present bias, the social optimum is well approximated by a three-account system: (i) a completely liquid account, (ii) a completely illiquid account, and (iii) an account with an ≃ 10% early withdrawal penalty. In some ways this resembles the U.S. system, which …

Experience Journey Map: A New Experience Design Tool For Structuring Youth Activities, Gary D. Ellis, Jingxian Jiang, Darlene Locke, Patti A. Freeman, Kaylee Jorgensen

Faculty Publications

We introduce a new experience design tool, an experience journey map, to assist youth professionals in planning engagement, immersion, and absorption activities. Experience journey maps are based on customer journey maps, which are widely used in business service design. This new approach highlights strategies for engendering deep structured experiences during the activity. An experience journey map is a matrix of columns and rows. Columns represent the sequence of activity stages. Rows are experience-structuring strategies derived from the theory of structured experience. These strategies include service performance strategies, deep structured experience strategies, and engagement, immersion, and absorption strategies. We present a …

Transformational It Leaders And Digital Innovation: The Moderating Effect Of Formal It Governance, Linda M. Pittenger, Nicholas Berente, James Gaskin

Faculty Publications

Does formal IT governance encourage innovation in the traditional domains of the IT function at the expense of new forms of “digital” innovation? We report on a study of 158 IT managers and leaders to understand the conditions under which transformational IT leadership can drive innovation in traditional forms of IT, as well as in the emerging “digital” domain. We find that highly formal IT governance practices can reduce ability of transformational IT managers and leaders to innovate in both domains, and this effect is greater for digital innovation. In stable cultures the moderation effect was strengthened, while insignificant in …

An Inquiry Into Gradable Zero-Waste Apparel Design, Melanie Carrico, Sheri L. Dragoo, Ellen Mckinney, Casey Stannard, Colleen Moretz, Ashley Rougeaux-Burnes

Faculty Publications

The implementation of standardized grading production practices within the mass market has been challenging for scholars experimenting with zero-waste apparel design. The purpose of this research was to test the efficacy of the Carrico Zero-waste Banded Grading (CZWBG) technique, which utilizes bands inserted in strategic locations as a method of grading zero-waste patterns across various consumer categories. An additional purpose was to evaluate the ways in which this grading approach affected the aesthetic outcomes of garments across a size run, and to determine whether this method affected the overall design process of the designers involved. Through experimental research design, six …

Developing Police, Madalyn K. Wasilczuk

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rural Estrangement And The Regulatory State, Ann M. Eisenberg

Faculty Publications

In today’s polarized social and political climate, rural alienation from government is often dismissed as “just more politics” or a symptom of problematic cultural norms. This Article takes rural disaffection from government seriously, with a focus on rural relationships with the federal regulatory state. The Article argues that rural disaffection from the regulatory state is not solely a cultural or political phenomenon among white conservatives. Rural disaffection is also a broader structural issue that stems in part from the regulatory state’s crisis of legitimacy.

Two factors show that rural disaffection from the regulatory state is more diffuse and profound than …

Bottom‐Up Versus Top‐Down Strategies For Morphology Control In Polymer‐Based Biomedical Materials, Alexander B. Cook, Tristan D. Clemons

Faculty Publications

The size and shape of polymer materials is becoming an increasingly important property in accessing new functions and applications of nano-/microparticles in many scientific fields. New synthetic methods have allowed unprecedented capability for the facile fabrication of anisotropic and shape-defined nanomaterials. Bottom-up approaches including: emulsion polymerization techniques, amphiphile self-assembly, and polymerization-induced self-assembly, can lead to polymer particles with precise dimensions in the nanoscale. Top-down methods such as lithographic templating, and 3D printing, have increased the access to unique particle shapes. In this review, these recent developments are appraised and contrasted, with future research directions providing that focus on biomedical applications. …

Reddit As A Source Of Covid-19 Information: A Content Analysis Of R/Coronavirus During The Early Pandemic, Brent Hale, Mark Alberta, Seung Woo Chae

Faculty Publications

Emerging research has begun examining the utility of social media platforms for information dissemination during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following this developing thread, this work examines discourse within r/coronavirus, a Reddit forum (i.e., subreddit) developed to curate COVID-19 information that burgeoned during the early months of the pandemic. Through a content analysis of 226 posts and 2260 corresponding comments generated between February and May, 2020, this study investigated early-pandemic communication patterns in this platform, including what information was deemed important and how users framed causes and solutions. Overall, findings indicate that users of r/coronavirus prioritized information about COVID-19 spread, public health …

Reverse Confusion And The Justification Of Trademark Protection, Jeremy N. Sheff

Faculty Publications

Theories of private law are dominated by welfarist normative frameworks, and trademark law is no exception. One such framework—the “search costs” theory associated with the Chicago School of law and economics—has long been the primary accepted justification for trademark rights. However, this theory fails to account for numerous features of actual trademark doctrine, as earlier scholarship has shown. This Article demonstrates how one underexamined area of trademark law—reverse confusion liability— is a similarly poor fit with the predictions and prescriptions of conventional economic theory. Plausible economic theories of trademark rights would either refuse to impose liability in reverse confusion cases …

The Roots Of Collapse: Imposing Constitutional Governance, Catherine Baylin Duryea

Faculty Publications

The foundational assumption of constitutional governance poses a conundrum for contemporary state-builders: a constitution heavily influenced by foreigners does not represent the views of the governed. Can a modern state-building effort foster democratic institutions when the new government reflects foreign? Nowhere was this tension more apparent than in Afghanistan, where the United States and the United Nations were heavily involved in drafting the 2004 Constitution. They shaped the process from the initial framework to the final, frenzied approval. Foreigners were engaged at both the procedural level—determining how the negotiations would occur and who would participate—and at the substantive level—providing input …

The New Disestablishments, Marc O. Degirolami

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

The individual has the autonomy of choice respecting matters of sex, gender, and procreation. The findings of science as established by the knowledge class, together with the policy preferences of that class in this domain, should be imposed on everyone. These propositions reflect two central creeds of what this Article calls the "new establishment." They, or statements like them, are the basis for policies across the nation touching many walks of life, from business to education, media, advertising, science, healthcare and medicine, and more.

Whether these propositions constitute a "religious" establishment turns out to be an irrelevant distraction. To …