Digital Commons Network^™

Corporate Governance And Tax Avoidance: Evidence From Governance Reform, Jon Kerr, Richard Price, Francisco J. Román, Miles A. Romney

Faculty Publications

Prior literature struggles to find evidence in U.S. settings to support the Desai and Dharmapala (2006) theory on how corporate governance affects tax avoidance. Most studies rely on equity incentive compensation as their governance proxy. We use a Mexican setting to examine this association and find firms with stronger governance engage in less tax avoidance. We rely on both a hand-collected governance index and governance reform to show improved corporate governance pushes tax avoidance toward a new equilibrium. Supplementary analyses show associations between governance and tax avoidance are greatest for tax-cost-sensitive familyowned firms and non-cross-listed firms with naturally weaker governance. …

Does Visibility Of An Engagement Partner’S Association With Recent Client Restatements Increase Fee Pressures From Non-Restating Clients?, Wuchun Chi, Ling Lei Lisic, Linda A. Myers, Mikhail Pevzner, Timothy Seidel

Faculty Publications

We examine whether engagement partners who have recently been associated with client restatements experience increased audit fee pressures from their non-restating clients. Using data from the United States (U.S.) and Taiwan, we find evidence of lower audit fees among non-restating companies whose audit engagement partner was recently associated with another client’s restatement. These findings are generally strongest when the partner-associated restatement is more prominent or severe, and in the U.S., when non-restating clients are in the same industry as the restating client. Although we find very limited evidence that fee pressures lead to lower quality audits for these partners’ other …

Prior Audit Experience And Cfo Financial Reporting Aggressiveness, Eric R. Condie, Kara M. Obermire, Timothy Seidel, Michael S. Wilkins

Faculty Publications

In this study, we investigate the financial reporting behavior of chief financial officers (CFOs) with significant prior audit experience. Our tests indicate that, on average, CFOs who were former audit managers or partners report less aggressively than CFOs without prior audit experience. Thus, the mindset that auditors develop during their time in public accounting – which should value objective, transparent, and conservative financial reporting – appears to persist when auditors take high-level positions in industry. However, we also find that the reporting behavior of prior-auditor CFOs becomes more aggressive over time as the salience of their audit experience decays. Further, …

The Aia At Ten - How Much Do The Pre-Aia Prior Art Rules Still Matter?, Colleen Chien, Janelle Barbier, Obie Reynolds

Faculty Publications

As the America Invents Act (AIA) turns 10, patent students across the
country may ask: if the law is already a decade old, why am I spending so much
time studying pre-AIA law? Though patents filed before the transition date will
remain in force up through March 2033, a good 10+ years away, teachers may also
be wondering which regime to emphasize and for how long the pre-AIA rules will
be considered fundamental rather than footnote material.

Less Common Bacterial, Fungal And Viral Infections: Review Of Management In The Pregnant Patient, Alyssa P. Gould, Hana R. Winders, Kayla R. Stover, P Brandon Bookstaver, Brooke Griffin, Christopher M. Bland, Lea S. Eiland, Milena Murray

Faculty Publications

This review is a comprehensive summary of treatment options for pregnant patients with less common bacterial, fungal, and viral infections. It offers guidance to clinicians based on the most recently published evidence-based research and expert recommendations. A search of MEDLINE (inception to March 2021) and the CDC website was performed. Liposomal amphotericin B is the preferred therapy for cryptococcosis, histoplasmosis, oesophageal candidiasis, and coccidioidomycosis, especially during the first trimester due to teratogenic concerns with azole antifungals. For oral candidiasis, clotrimazole troches or miconazole mucoadhesive buccal tablets are recommended. A β-lactam antimicrobial is preferred over doxycycline for various manifestations of Lyme …

An Estate Plan For Kanye West, Thomas Simmons

Faculty Publications

One inventory item in megastar Kanye West’s vast portfolio of assets merits a unique sort of care and safeguarding—his right of publicity. The right of publicity is a property interest which represents the commercial value of a celebrity’s name, image, and likeness. In some states, including California, the right survives the celebrity’s death and is freely alienable and devisable. A protective arrangement, such as a trust, is often pursued to impose postmortem use and transferability restrictions on property that has particular importance to the testator. This Article proposes a noncharitable purpose trust as a means by which Kanye West’s right …

Clothing Consumption During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Mining Tweets, C A. Liu, S B. Xia, C M. Lang

Faculty Publications

Understanding how consumers have shifted in clothing consumption in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic is critical for fashion clothing brands and businesses to identify what value means to consumers to locate growth opportunities. This exploratory study intends to provide a picture of consumers' clothing consumption evolution while going through the pandemic crisis. We take a viewpoint that integrates the perspectives of life status changes and stress coping to examine consumers' responses to clothing consumption during the COVID-19 global pandemic. A total of 68,511 relevant tweets were collected from January 1, 2020, through September 31, 2020. Sentiment and content …

Economic Regulation And Rural America, Ann M. Eisenberg

Faculty Publications

Rural America today is at a crossroads. Widespread socioeconomic decline outside cities has fueled the idea that rural communities have been “left behind.” The question is whether these “left behind” localities should be allowed to dwindle out of existence, or whether intervention to attempt rural revitalization is warranted. Many advocate non-intervention because rural lifestyles are inefficient to sustain. Others argue that, even if the nation wanted to help, it lacks the law and policy tools to redirect rural America’s course effectively.

This Article argues that we do have the law and policy tools necessary to address rural socioeconomic marginalization, and …

Icwa’S Irony, Marcia A. Yablon-Zug

Faculty Publications

The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is a federal statute that protects Indian children by keeping them connected to their families and culture. The Act’s provisions include support for family reunification, kinship care preferences, cultural competency considerations and community involvement. These provisions parallel national child welfare policies. Nevertheless, the Act is relentlessly attacked as a law that singles out Indian children for unique and harmful treatment. This is untrue but, ironically, it will be if challenges to the ICWA are successful. To prevent this from occurring, the defense of the Act needs to change. For too long, this defense has …

South Carolina Practice Materials: A Selective Annotated Bibliography, Eve Ross

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Bounds Of Energy Law, Shelley Welton

Faculty Publications

U.S. energy law was born of fossil fuels. Consequently, our energy law has long centered on the material and legal puzzles that bringing fossil fuels to market presents. Eliminating these same carbon-producing energy sources, however, has emerged as perhaps the most pressing material transformation needed in the twenty-first century—and one that energy law scholarship has rightfully embraced. Yet in our admirable quest to aid in this transformation, energy law scholars are largely writing into the field bequeathed to us, proposing changes that tweak, but do not fundamentally challenge, last century’s tools for managing the extraction, transport, and delivery of fossil …

Market-Anticipatory Approaches To Rural Property Vacancy, Ann M. Eisenberg

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The End Of Comparative Qualified Immunity, Colin Miller

Faculty Publications

Critics have called qualified immunity an “unqualified disgrace,” an “abomination,” and “a scourge that closes courthouse doors to people whose constitutional rights have been violated.” One particularly troubling aspect of qualified immunity is what I’ll call comparative qualified immunity: the ability of a government official to avoid liability by claiming that his behavior wasn’t that much worse than conduct by a prior official that was deemed constitutional. In November 2020, the Supreme Court seemingly created a narrow exception to comparative qualified immunity in cases involving “particularly egregious facts.” In February 2021, however, the Supreme Court signaled that this was no …

Analysis Of Geotagging Behavior: Do Geotagged Users Represent The Twitter Population?, Amir Karami, R. R. Kadari, L. Panati, H. Bheemreddy, B. Bozorgi

Faculty Publications

Twitter’s APIs are now the main data source for social media researchers. A large number of studies have utilized Twitter data for diverse research interests. Twitter users can share their precise real-time location, and Twitter APIs can provide this information as longitude and latitude. These geotagged Twitter data can help to study human activities and movements for different applications. Compared to the mostly small-scale data samples in different domains, such as social science, collecting geotagged data offers large samples. There is a fundamental question whether geotagged users can represent non-geotagged users. While some studies have investigated the question from different …

"It Is Not Necessary For Eagles To Be Crows": Book Review, Neil Fulton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Dedication To Professor Emeritus Jonathan Van Patten, Jonathan Van Patten

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Improving The Quality Of Survey Data: Using Answering Behavior As An Alternative Method For Detecting Biased Respondents, Manasvi Kumar, David Kim, Joseph S. Valacich, Jeffrey L. Jenkins, Alan R. Dennis

Faculty Publications

Online surveys are used for collecting self-report data. Despite their prevalent use, data quality problems persist due to various response biases. Here, we demonstrate how participant answering behaviors can be used to identify biased responses. We administered an online survey where participants reported their personality dimensions of neuroticism and extraversion—two personality dimensions that have been previously shown to be correlated with a propensity to deceive—and were later presented with a scenario to exhibit deceptive behavior. We then generated models to predict deception using the neuroticism and extraversion constructs. Using respondents’ fine-grained mouse movement data when answering these questions, we generated …

Model And Data, Equilibrium Of Self-Formed, Single-Thread, Sand-Bed Rivers, Enrica Viparelli, Esther C. Eke

Faculty Publications

This submission contains the following files, also uploaded as Supplementary Information for the manuscript Equilibrium of self-formed, single-thread, sand-bed rivers submitted after major revisions to the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Excel file with embedded macro Equilibrium_calculator.xlxm, contains the solver of the analytical model presented in the manuscript.

Excel file Equilibrium_results.xlxs contains model data used to generate the plots.

The Magnitude And Climate Sensitivity Of Isotopic Fractionation From Ablation Of Antarctic Dry Valley Lakes, A. W. Bellagamba, M. Berkelhammer, L. Winslow, P. T. Doran, K. F. Myers, S. Devlin, I. Hawes

Faculty Publications

There has been extensive research on the effects of evaporation on the isotopic ratio of lacustrine and marine water bodies; however, there are limited data on how ablation or sublimation from lake or sea ice influences the isotopic ratio of the residual water body. This is a challenging problem because there remains uncertainty on the magnitude of fractionation during sublimation and because ablation can involve mixed-phase processes associated with simultaneous sublimation, melting, evaporation, and refreezing. This uncertainty limits the ability to draw quantitative inferences on changing hydrological budgets from stable isotope records in arctic, Antarctic, and alpine lakes. Here, we …

Life Cycle Environmental And Economic Comparison Of Water Droplet Machining And Traditional Abrasive Waterjet Cutting, Giovanni Guglielmi, Benjamin Mitchell, Cuihong Song, Brad L. Kinsey, Weiwei Mo

Faculty Publications

Abrasive waterjet (AWJ) cutting is a manufacturing technique, which uses a high-speed waterjet as the transport medium for abrasive particles to erode and cut through metal workpieces. The use of abrasives has significant environmental impacts and leads to the high operating costs of AWJ cutting. Therefore, it is important to investigate whether other metal cutting approaches can perform the same tasks with reduced environmental and economic impacts. One such manufacturing innovation is water droplet machining (WDM). In this process, the waterjet, which is immersed in a sub-atmospheric pressure environment, is discretized into a train of high velocity water droplets, which …

Photoreceptor Phosphodiesterase (Pde6): Structure, Regulatory Mechanisms, And Implications For Treatment Of Retinal Diseases, Rick H. Cote, Richa Gupta, Michael J. Irwin, Xin Wang

Faculty Publications

The photoreceptor phosphodiesterase (PDE6) is a member of large family of Class I phosphodiesterases responsible for hydrolyzing the second messengers cAMP and cGMP. PDE6 consists of two catalytic subunits and two inhibitory subunits that form a tetrameric protein. PDE6 is a peripheral membrane protein that is localized to the signaling-transducing compartment of rod and cone photoreceptors. As the central effector enzyme of the G-protein coupled visual transduction pathway, activation of PDE6 catalysis causes in a rapid decrease in cGMP levels that results in closure of cGMP-gated ion channels in the photoreceptor plasma membrane. Because of its importance in the phototransduction …

Swimming Against The Flow: Environmental Dna Can Detect Bull Sharks (Carcharhinus Leucas) Across A Dynamic Deltaic Interface, James Marcus Drymon, Katherine E. Schweiss, Emily A. Seubert, Ryan N. Lehman, Toby S. Daly-Engel, Mariah Pfleger, Nicole M. Phillips

Faculty Publications

© 2020 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd Human activities in coastal areas are accelerating ecosystem changes at an unprecedented pace, resulting in habitat loss, hydrological modifications, and predatory species declines. Understanding how these changes potentially cascade across marine and freshwater ecosystems requires knowing how mobile euryhaline species link these seemingly disparate systems. As upper trophic level predators, bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas) play a crucial role in marine and freshwater ecosystem health. Telemetry studies in Mobile Bay, Alabama, suggest that bull sharks extensively use the northern portions of the bay, an estuarine–freshwater interface known …

We Too Are Guardians Of Truth, John R. Rachal

Faculty Publications

In our current tribalized social and political culture, an even greater premium is placed upon the necessity of educators inculcating a skeptical, truth-seeking habit of mind in their learners. This brief essay offers an exploration of this role both from the perspectives of adult education and liberal education.

Red Beans And Rice Or Gumbo: Identity, The South, And Entry-Level English Classes, Jennifer Brannock

Faculty Publications

This recipe illustrates how active-learning techniques can be applied to first-year English composition classes. Exploring the theme of identity, materials are selected to engage students and encourage discussion. Using speed dating as the method of interaction, students dissect each item, focusing on the physical nature of the resource as well as the content. By emphasizing active-learning applications and employing them in the classes, the sessions require students to interact with the materials instead of merely viewing the resources as “objects.” The librarian’s role is to emphasize exploration and discovery, which allows students to become more comfortable with primary sources and …

“I Hate To Be A Burden!”: Experiencing Feelings Associated With Ostracism Due To One's Poor Performance Burdening The Group, James H. Wirth, Donald F. Sacco, Mitch Brown, Bradley M. Okdie

Faculty Publications

We examined if perceiving oneself as burdensome, due to performing poorly in a group, can lead to feelings associated with ostracism (being excluded and ignored), without actually being ostracized. Participants completed a typing game (Study 1) or solved Remote Associates Test (Study 2) items where they performed worse, equal, or better than the group. To isolate the influence of burdensomeness, participants were consistently selected by computerized agents to play. In each study, worse performers experienced greater perceptions of being burdensome, less basic need satisfaction, increased negative mood, and greater anticipation of being excluded from a future group task compared to …

Commuting Perturbations Of Operator Equations, Xue Xu, Jiu Ding

Faculty Publications

Let X be a Banach space and let T: X →X be a bounded linear operator with closed range. We study a class of commuting perturbations of the corresponding operator equation, using the concept of the spectral radius of a bounded linear operator. Our results extend the classic perturbation theorem for invertible operators and its generalization for arbitrary operators under the commutability assumption.

A Story Of Bodying In Science Education, Christie C. Byers, Maria F.G. Wallace

Faculty Publications

In poetic dialogue with BecomingAlivewithinScienceEducation(Research):ThinkingwithLifeHistory(ies),BodiesandStickiness, stories of bodying and body(ies) of work are playfully explored.

Privacy-Preserving Non-Participatory Surveillance System For Covid-19-Like Pandemics, Mahmoud Nabil, Ahmed Sherif, Mohamed Mahmoud, Waleed Alsmary, Maazen Alsabaan

Faculty Publications

COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a pressing need for an effective surveillance system to control the spread of infection. However, the existing systems are run by the people’s smartphones and without a strong participation from the people, the systems become ineffective. Moreover, these systems can be misused to spy on people and breach their privacy. Due to recent privacy breaches, people became anxious about their privacy, and without privacy reassurance, the people may not accept the systems. In this paper, we propose a non-participatory privacy-preserving surveillance system for COVID-19-like pandemics. The system aims to control the spread of COVID-19 infection without …

Lower Socioeconomic Status Neighborhoods In Puerto Rico Have More Diverse Mosquito Communities And Higher Aedes Aegypti Abundance, Nicole A. Scavo, Roberto Barrera, Limarie J. Reyes-Torres, Donald A. Yee

Faculty Publications

Mosquito community dynamics in urban areas are influenced by an array of both social and ecological factors. Human socioeconomic factors (SEF) can be related to mosquito abundance and diversity as urban mosquito development sites are modified by varying human activity, e.g., level of abandoned structures or amount of accumulated trash. The goal of this study was to investigate the relationships among mosquito diversity, populations of Aedes aegypti, and SEF in a tropical urban setting. Mosquitoes were collected using BG Sentinel 2 traps and CDC light traps during three periods between late 2018 and early 2019 in San Juan, Puerto …

Functional Altruism Among Agreeable And Narcissistic Donors: Evidence From Crowdsourced Fundraisers, Kelsey M. Drea, Mitch Brown, Donald F. Sacco

Faculty Publications

Given the increasing popularity of crowdsourced fundraisers, understanding how characteristics of funding initiatives and donors influence donations has critical real-world implications. Across two studies, we identified potential situational factors most conducive to successful crowdsourcing while also determining whether individual differences in various personality factors predicted differing levels of donation. Participants in Study 1 (MAge = 19.99; 309 women, 75 men) viewed descriptions that manipulated donation type (organizer donation, anonymous donation, no donation) and type of fundraiser (self-organized, other-organized), and reported their willingness to donate to an individual’s medical treatment and completed inventories assessing Big Five personality traits. In Study 2 …