Business Commons^™

Climate Policy Uncertainty And Housing Prices: Analyzing Bidirectional Transmission Across U.S. Metropolitan Areas, Sourav Batabyal, Alper Gormus

Finance and Economics

This study examines the relationship between climate policy uncertainty (CPU) and residential housing prices across U.S. metropolitan areas using the U.S. CPU index developed by Gavriilidis in 2021 and monthly S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, covering January 1991 to May 2024. Employing a Fourier-augmented Toda–Yamamoto causality framework that accounts for both abrupt and gradual structural breaks, we document significant CPU → housing prices transmission in multiple metropolitan markets, with bidirectional transmission dynamics emerging in Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, and San Francisco, as well as at the U.S. national level. The results reveal substantial spatial heterogeneity across various …

Education, Evaluation, And Impact Of A Delegation Learning Session In The Care Pair Model, Tiffany M. Whitney

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects: College of Nursing

The persistent nurse shortage is forcing the health sector to think about the way care is provided, and teams collaborate. One model, the Care Pair Model (CPM), pairs registered nurses (RNs) with nursing assistants (NAs) to distribute responsibility and provide patient care in a timely manner and with the best quality. Even though the model encourages working together effectively, many nurses still find it difficult to delegate to uncertainty, lack of confidence, or communication barriers. Improving these abilities is essential for fostering trust, ensuring a smooth workflow, and providing for patient and provider needs.

This Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) …

Design And Production Of A Carbon Fiber Longboard, Vince Fichtel

Honors Theses

This thesis contains an overview of the design, prototyping, and manufacturing of a carbon fiber long board. The purpose of this capstone was to create a viable product for the real-world market and then determine how to manufacture it at scale with sustainable financial practices. In order to accomplish this task, engineering, accounting, and manufacturing challenges had to be overcome throughout all stages. The production process involved the carbon fiber layup, baking, water jet cutting, and assembly of the carbon fiber longboard. In order to optimize this process, continuous improvement and lean manufacturing problem solving techniques were applied. After a …

Accounting Practicum, Vincent A. Vavra

Honors Theses

This thesis consists of eight case studies and assignments completed over two semesters in Accountancy 420 under the guidance of Dr, Dickinson. These assignments were completed both collectively as part of a group and individually. These assignments and case studies explored a wide variety of topics related to accounting both directly, including research into the financial statements of multiple companies and audit methods, to more indirect effects such as examining the lives of political figures and economists. These assignments involved in-depth research into various topics in order to better understand how these topics may connect in real-world accounting and business …

Large Language Models As A Detector For Political Deepfakes, Gracie L. Roberts

Honors Theses

The advancement of generative artificial intelligence has allowed for the creation of highly realistic political deepfakes, posing significant threats to democratic integrity and trust in governmental institutions. This study investigates the effectiveness of Large Language Models (LLMs) as detectors for political deepfakes, specifically exploring their ability to address the transferability, interpretability, and robustness limitations inherent in traditional detection systems.

The research was conducted in four steps including data collection, model selection, experimental testing, and evaluation. Two datasets were used in this study. The first dataset uses 833 fake images from the Political Deepfake Incidents Database (PDID) and 833 real images …

The Design And Manufacturing Process Of The Concealed Shelf, Joshua Harvel

Honors Theses

The Haley Barbour Center for Manufacturing Excellence (CME) at the University of Mississippi challenges students to manufacture a product and put forth a balanced manufacturing line in a senior capstone project. The chosen product was a concealed shelf, or a shelf with a hidden compartment. The team aimed to design a product, formulate a project plan, analyze the market, conduct financial analysis, develop a prototype, establish a manufacturing process, and demonstrate that process in two production runs. The team used tools such as Computer Aided Design (CAD), market surveys, jig creation, and line balancing to accomplish these tasks. After two …

Monetary Policy Regimes And Commercial Real Estate A Comparative Analysis Of The Relationship Between Interest Rates And Capitalization Rates In The Post-Gfc And Post-Covid Periods, Brooke Matney

Honors Theses

This study analyzes the relationship between U.S. interest rates and capitalization rates within commercial real estate under different monetary policy regimes. Specifically, the research examines whether the relationship between interest rates and cap rates changed structurally between the post-Global Financial Crisis (GFC) period and the post-COVID tightening cycle. Using quarterly data from 2000–2025 obtained from Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), the study compares movements in the 10-Year U.S. Treasury yield and a constructed cap rate proxy derived from rental income and property price index data. Linear regression analysis was conducted across three monetary policy periods: the post-GFC expansionary environment (2010– …

A Compilation Of Accounting Studies And Analyses, Ashley Mason

Honors Theses

Over the course of two semesters in ACCY 420, under the instruction of Dr. Victoria Dickinson, my team and I were given a company and tasked with creating an operational plan and audit plan to account for the solution we developed. These case studies required us to research the topic and to also reflect on what we have learned in previous accounting classes. In each of these cases, my team and I researched the topics, proposed a solution, developed a presentation, and then argued our solution to a panel of accounting and business professionals. These experiences strengthened my public speaking …

A Compilation Of Accounting Case Studies, George R. Vandyke

Honors Theses

This thesis has been composed throughout the process of taking the Honors Accounting 420 class. This class spans two semesters and helps students understand certain aspects of financial accounting and related areas. These cases range from what may be involved in an audit to examining a company and how certain new laws may affect its business operations.

The information gathered for this was through group work and collaboration to achieve the common goal of completing each case. The cases varied from week to week, as well as the people with whom you would be working. This led to many different …

Analyzing Comtemporary Accounting Issues: Case Studies In Audit, Tax, And Financial Regulation, Diya S. Patel

Honors Theses

This thesis is comprised of five case studies that explore a range of contemporary issues in accounting, with a focus on auditing, financial reporting, regulatory compliance, and evolving role of accountants in a complex business environment. Dr. Victoria Dickinson assigned and advised the case studies throughout the Honors Accountancy 420 course. The case studies examine the analysis and interpretation of financial statements, emphasizing the identification of risk, the use of professional judgment, and the implementation of internal controls to ensure accuracy and transparency. Additionally, the case studies evaluate the growing impact of regulatory frameworks on businesses, highlighting both the intended …

Center For Manufacturing Excellence Capstone Project: Critter Catchers, Wilson R. Eatherly, Sophie C. Smith, Joyce W. Nkanor

Honors Theses

The Haley Barbour Center for Manufacturing Excellence annually presents seniors with the opportunity to do a capstone project that encapsulates their skills learned throughout undergraduate coursework. The interdisciplinary teams are made up of engineering, accounting, and business students. These students bring their skill sets together to come up with a business plan for the project they have been placed on. This team, Critter Catchers, chose to manufacture non-lethal animal traps meant to be a safe alternative to traps on the market that may injure animals. The trap was made primarily out of wood and operated by means of a pressure-triggered …

Cases In Accounting Contexts, Carson T. Kimble

Honors Theses

This thesis examines a series of eight applied case studies that explore contemporary issues in accounting. Rather than focusing on a single research question, this project is a broad set of accounting situations completed through a yearlong thesis class under the guidance of Dr. Victoria Dickinson. These cases explored technical skills, professional judgement, and analytical reasoning in the accounting profession. These cases required professional research, including analysis of financial statements, review of regulations, and evaluation of academic sources. The work also emphasized collaboration among classmates and application to real-world scenarios. The thesis explored a variety of challenges that accountants encounter …

The Design And Manufacturing Process Of The Concealed Shelf, Clarence A. Matthews Iv

Honors Theses

The Haley Barbour Center for Manufacturing Excellence (CME) at the University of Mississippi challenges students to manufacture a product and put forth a balanced manufacturing line in a senior capstone project. The chosen product was a concealed shelf, or a shelf with a hidden compartment. The team aimed to design a product, formulate a project plan, analyze the market, conduct financial analysis, develop a prototype, establish a manufacturing process, and demonstrate that process in two production runs. The team used tools such as Computer Aided Design (CAD), market surveys, jig creation, and line balancing to accomplish these tasks. After two …

Various Cases Studies On Kraft Heinz, Thomas Sowell, And More, Aidan K. Bitting

Honors Theses

This thesis is composed of various case studies that were completed throughout the course of the Honors Accounting 420 class. Over the course of the school year, these cases covered diverse topics related to accounting and finance. Each case has a different format which requires different solutions. Some cases were focused on the analysis of a 10-K, while other cases were focused on the effects new laws and regulations can have on the way a company conducts business.

Most of the cases were completed in groups. This helped emphasize the importance of teamwork and collaboration. The groups varied case by …

Manufacturing Process Of A Wooden Tortilla Press: Idea To Production, Colleen Nolan, Ben Bird, Olivia Marque, Emma Palmer, Hayden Walker

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to document the design, development, and manufacturing of a wooden tortilla press completed as a capstone project through the Center for Manufacturing Excellence (CME). The project follows a structured product development process that began with problem definition and concept development, progressed through design, prototyping, and jig fabrication, and culminated in a full production run on the CME shop floor. A multidisciplinary team, including engineers, a marketer, and an accountant, collaborated throughout the project to support both technical development and manufacturing execution. Project planning and scheduling were established early and maintained throughout the project to …

Accy 420 Financial Reporting Casework And Class Takeaways, Davis C. Brewer

Honors Theses

In my practicum class during my junior year at the University of Mississippi, Dr. Dickinson assigned eight case studies over the course of our Accountancy 420 course. These case studies involved several different topics, many regarding financial reporting. This included a wide range of topics such as the Corporate Transparency Act, ESG regulations, asset theory, and most importantly the new Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) regulations. Throughout the year guest speakers would come to class and discuss working in the accounting industry, as well as answer any questions that we might have. During this time, we learned how to analyze …

Of Corporations And Compliance: Accountancy Case Studies And An Exploration Of Future-Oriented Action In Corporate Accounting, Nathan K. Woo

Honors Theses

This thesis compiles several case studies completed under the direction of Dr. Victoria Dickinson during the 2024–2025 academic year for the fulfillment of requirements imposed by Accountancy 420: Independent Study. The first semester (Fall 2024) involved four research cases. The first case involved analysis of AMC Entertainment’s annual report (10-K) for the purpose of identifying pertinent financial statement information and creating risk-mitigation strategies. The second case pertained to the January 2024 Corporate Transparency Act and its effect on reporting companies. The third case centered around analysis of the relationship between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues and public accounting. Finally, …

How National Trends Impact Accounting, Greyson Antes

Honors Theses

The following thesis contains eight accounting case studies performed throughout the 2024 academic year concerning a multitude of topics like the “Make America Healthy Again” movement and other related themes impacting the accounting industry. During these projects, students were randomly assigned to different groups to work on case studies. There were five miscellaneous cases covering different accounting topics that ultimately culminated into the final topic in the spring semester. This final topic contained three large case studies, all with the same group, investigating how the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement would impact the audit plan for Kellanova, a snack …

Accounting In A Changing Landscape: A Collection Of Case Studies, Rachel K. Rowe

Honors Theses

This thesis comprises six independent yet interconnected case studies that reflect on a range of modern accounting and regulatory topics. These cases were written under the direction of Dr. Victoria Dickinson during two semesters of the Professional Research and Development Thesis Program at the University of Mississippi. The purpose of this class is to provide students with the opportunity to research cases that have real-world applications in the field of accounting.

The first case explores Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues, emphasizing the increased importance of reporting for them and the growing role of accountants in sustainability assurance. The second …

Accounting In Practice: An Analysis Of Real-World Business And Regulatory Case Studies, Claire E. Coursey

Honors Theses

This thesis consists of several accounting case studies completed throughout two semesters of Honors Accountancy 420 under the direction of Dr. Victoria Dickinson. The projects combined both individual and group work and focused on applying accounting knowledge to real-world business situations and current events. Each case study required research, analysis, and evaluation of topics related to financial reporting, auditing, regulation, and corporate operations. Throughout the fall semester, the case studies introduced a variety of accounting and business topics that helped develop research, analytical, and communication skills. During the spring semester, the primary focus shifted toward analyzing the potential impact of …

Human-Like Or System-Like Trust? A Comparison Of Trust Measures For Intelligent Assistants, Denise Mcwilliams, Adriane B. Randolph

Proceedings of the Cognitive Innovation Conference (CognoCon)

Organizations increasingly deploy intelligent assistants to augment human tasks within virtual teams, reshaping how work is coordinated and performed. As intelligent assistants become embedded in everyday workflows, technology shifts from a passive tool to an active collaborator in team processes. Despite growing adoption, trust remains a critical factor influencing the use of intelligent assistants and may hinder organizations’ efforts to realize their full value. Prior research debates which trust construct is most appropriate for examining trust in artificial intelligence. Traditional perspectives emphasize cognitive and affective trust, developed for human-to-human relationships, which may not fully capture trust in human–computer contexts. Emerging …

From Configuration To Cognition: A Self-Configuring Agentic Crm Architecture For Small-Scale Retail Enterprises, Praveen Manimangalam

Proceedings of the Cognitive Innovation Conference (CognoCon)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly enhanced enterprise-scale customer relationship management (CRM) systems; however, small-scale retail businesses remain structurally excluded from these advancements due to configuration complexity, technical overhead, and limited digital capabilities. This paper introduces a Self-Configuring Agentic CRM (SC-ACRM) architecture designed to eliminate configuration barriers in micro-retail contexts. The framework operationalizes Intent-to-Schema automation, translating natural-language business intent into structured operational models and reducing configuration debt embedded in traditional metadatadriven systems. The architecture further incorporates adaptive agentic orchestration and Cognitive Infrastructure Elasticity, enabling dynamic policy adjustment under demand volatility while preserving human-supervisory governance. Using an agent-based simulation of a multi-SKU …

Hierarchical Multi-Level Llm Agent Swarms For Financial Research Synthesis And Trading Decision Support In Multi Strategy Hedge Funds, Puneet Gandhi, Rishab Gulati

Proceedings of the Cognitive Innovation Conference (CognoCon)

"There will be no software in the future that's not agentic. And so, it is absolutely true that every software company will become an agentic company.”- Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. As various companies grapple with agentic architectures suitable to their firm environments, we present a hierarchical agentic architecture geared towards Multi Strategy hedge funds. Multi-strategy hedge funds operate within highly complex and rapidly evolving information environments. Trading decisions emerge from layered organizational structures in which sector specific teams continuously consume heterogeneous data sources. Sr. Portfolio Managers synthesize information to allocate capital towards high-conviction opportunities. As the volume and diversity of financial …

Creating It Capabilities In Workflow Automation With Unstructured Data, Gary J. Braswell

Proceedings of the Cognitive Innovation Conference (CognoCon)

Service organizations increasingly seek to automate customer service workflows, yet most customer communications arrive as unstructured data, such as email and chat. Although large language models (LLMs) offer new possibilities for interpreting such data, their non-deterministic behavior creates reliability risks that can undermine automation performance, as error rates as low as 10% can cause automated flows to perform worse than manual ones. This research discusses how firms can build IT capabilities that convert LLM-based interpretation of unstructured data into reliable automated customer service workflows. Using the Resource-Based View (RBV) as the theoretical lens, the study examines how knowledge sharing and …

The Paradox Of Perfection: Hidden Risks Of High-Performing Ai In Human-In-The-Loop Governance, Chen Zhong, Alper Yayla, Xueping Liang

Proceedings of the Cognitive Innovation Conference (CognoCon)

As AI systems achieve near-perfect accuracy in high-stakes decision-making domains, governance frameworks risk overlooking a critical paradox: superior AI reliability may render human oversight ceremonial rather than functional. This paper presents a theoretically grounded experimental research design to investigate Automation Complacency—the cognitive degradation of human vigilance triggered by sustained streaks of accurate AI outputs. Grounded in Dual-Process Theory and the competency trap literature, we hypothesize that consistent AI reliability shifts operators from analytical (System 2) to heuristic (System 1) processing, significantly impairing error detection when AI eventually fails. Using a simulated phishing detection task (N=200), we plan to test how …

Artificial Intelligence, Large Language Models, Ai Applications, Ai Business Transformation, Reza Vaezi

Proceedings of the Cognitive Innovation Conference (CognoCon)

This paper critically examines the prevailing approaches to AI ethics, arguing that current frameworks—focused on regulation, compliance, and risk mitigation—are insufficient for guiding increasingly autonomous and socially influential AI systems. It contends that ethical behavior in humans arises from morality that is rooted in human empathy, which AI lacks. By differentiating between morality (emotionally intuitive) and ethics (analytical and rule-based), the paper highlights the limitations of procedural ethics in AI, which operates solely in an analytical mode. The author proposes an alternative path for ethical AI through conscious empathic AI, suggesting that embedding empathic capacities could stabilize moral behavior in …

Llms Are Not The Answer Relevant Ai For Business Transformation, Christopher Simpkins

Proceedings of the Cognitive Innovation Conference (CognoCon)

AI hype is driving AI failure. Hype-driven focus on LLM-centric AI products – which in reality have few practical applications – is causing businesses to miss out on the real opportunities offered by the breadth of AI that is more relevant to their problems. In this position paper I provide a definition of AI that focuses on the kinds of problems AI can solve and a brief introduction to the broad field of AI. I then explain at a high level why LLMs fall short of their hype and always will, as a consequence of fundamental technical limitations. Within the …

When Humans Stop Thinking: Cognitive Offloading, Atrophy Risk, And The Design Of Human-Ai Intelligence, Pravinya Mandalapu, Adriane B. Randolph, Andrea Taylor

Proceedings of the Cognitive Innovation Conference (CognoCon)

As artificial intelligence (AI) systems proliferate across professional and everyday contexts, humans increasingly rely on these tools to perform cognitive tasks they once carried out internally. This phenomenon of cognitive offloading extends beyond the use of traditional aids like calendars or calculators, raising foundational questions about how deep reliance on AI reshapes human cognition itself (Risko & Gilbert, 2016). While offloading can enhance immediate task performance, emerging evidence suggests meaningful costs to memory retention, judgment quality, and creative autonomy (Burnett & Richmond, 2025; Risko et al., 2023). Drawing on seminal work by Cliff Nass and colleagues on media multitasking, task-switching, …

Agentic Implementation In Business Processes With Guardrails, Kunal Kumar

Proceedings of the Cognitive Innovation Conference (CognoCon)

Enterprises are increasingly adopting Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance automation in document driven workflows. However, their probabilistic behavior raises challenges related to governance, auditability, and regulatory compliance. This work proposes an agentic automation framework that integrates LLM-based cognitive services with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to enable intelligent document processing while preserving determinism and traceability. The architecture separates probabilistic interpretation from deterministic execution, using LLMs for bounded information extraction and RPA for rule-based orchestration, validation, and audit logging. To mitigate risks associated with nondeterministic AI behavior, the framework incorporates guardrails such as structured prompting, confidence thresholds, human-in-the-loop review, and comprehensive …

Case Studies In The Accounting World, Brady J. Halloran

Honors Theses

This paper represents an accumulation of cases during a year of course work through the Professional Research and Development Thesis Program at the University of Mississippi under the supervision of Dr. Victoria Dickinson. The program includes a class that spans two semesters. The purpose of the class is to administer cases to the students that will allow them to research and discuss real-world examples and experiences within the accounting industry. The eight case studies that are included in this paper cover a wide range of political, legal and financial topics that businesses have recently dealt with. Through performance of these …