Accountancy's Sandra Vera-Muñoz was honored as part of the 2021 Notre Dame All-Faculty Team during the ND-Cincinnati halftime. Provost Marie Lynn Miranda recognized Sandra for excellence in research and teaching, and service to the University. Congratulations, Sandra! Learn more about the award…
Please join me in congratulating Jeff Burks, whose paper, “Opaque Auditor Dismissal Disclosures: What Does Timing Reveal that Disclosures Do Not?,” co-authored with our former colleague and friend of the Department, Jennifer Stevens, has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy…
Please join me in congratulating John Donovan and Stephannie Larocque for their recent scholarly achievements:
John’s paper, "Private lenders’ use of analyst earnings forecasts when establishing debt covenant thresholds," coauthored with Jared Jennings (Washington University) and Andy Call (Arizona State University) has been accepted for publication at The Accounting Review…
The end of the 2020-2021 academic year saw us saying farewell to Asis Martinez-Jerez. Asis has joined the faculty of The Cornell School of Hotel Administration. Sam Ranzilla has joined the James Benjamin Department of Accounting – Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School.
We want to welcome Tim Morrison…
Please join me in congratulating Hal White, whose paper, “Private Disclosure and Myopia: Evidence from the JOBS Act” (coauthored with Kimball Chapman and Badryah Alhusaini) has been accepted for publication in the Review of Accounting Studies. Here is the abstract:
In this paper, we examine whether a regulatory shift allowing more private firm disclosure leads to less myopia. The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act of 2012 permits a subset of firms to meet privately with potential investors in the months before an IPO, allowing them to provide information without proprietary cost concerns, leading to more complete disclosure. Consistent with a reduction in myopia, we find that these firms are less likely to manage earnings to beat short-term benchmarks, are punished less harshly by the market (via stock price declines) when they do miss the earnings benchmark, and provide fewer short-horizon forecasts. We also find that firm disclosures are less short-term focused, investors have longer holding periods than do those same investors in non-JOBS Act IPO firms and that these firms attract more long-term investors. Our results hold (i) across the subsample of firms for which other JOBS Act provisions were already present, and (ii) after controlling for those other provisions, consistent with private discussions acting as the primary mechanism. Our results are also strongest for firms with higher proprietary costs, consistent with private disclosure reducing myopia by reducing proprietary cost concerns. Collectively, this evidence suggests that when firms are able to privately disclose information to investors, both firms and investors become less myopic. …
Please join me in congratulating Ken Milani and Professor Emeritus Juan Rivera for being recognized with a Certificate of Merit by the Institute of Management Accountants for their article series, "Budgeting for International Operations," published in Strategic Finance, November 2020 through January 2021. Please see the citation in the attached bulletin. Congratulations, Ken and Juan!…
Please join me in congratulating Fred Mittelstaedt on his appointment as the KPMG Collegiate Professor of Accountancy. Below is an excerpt from Dean Martijn Cremers' appointment letter:
“A collegiate term chair honors a faculty member on the basis of his or her contribution to research and scholarship, teaching and learning, or service to the discipline and University.…
Congratulations to Brian Levey for being selected as the 2021 recipient of the James Dincolo Outstanding Undergraduate Professor Award, and Keith Urtel for being selected as the 2021 recipient of the MSA Outstanding Professor Award. Congratulations Brian and Keith for these well-deserved recognitions!…
Congratulations to Erik Beardsley, whose paper, “What’s my target? Individual analyst forecasts and last-chance earnings management," co-authored with John Robinson (Texas A&M University) and Paul Wong (UC-Davis) has been accepted for publication at the Journal of Accounting and Economics. The paper is tentatively scheduled to be published in Volume 72, Number 1, August 2021. …
The AICPA announced the 89 winners of the 2020 Elijah Watt Sells Award. To qualify for the award, CPA candidates must obtain a cumulative average score above 95.50 across all four sections of the CPA Examination, pass all four sections on their first attempt, and have completed testing in 2020. Below are the citations for Notre Dame’s award recipients:…
Accountancy's Jamie O'Brien was recognized by students as the Club Advisor of the Year. He is the faculty advisor for the College Republicans and the student chapter of Turning Point USA at Notre Dame. According to Jamie, he has been the faculty advisor for the College Republicans ever since Abe Lincoln was elected as the first Republican president (actually for 9 years) and for Turning Point for 1 year (it is a new club). There are over 450 Notre Dame student clubs.…
A paper by Accountancy's Hal White titled "Investor Relations, Engagement, and Shareholder Activism" was accepted by The Accounting Review.…
A paper by Accountancy's F. Asis Martinez-Jerez titled "Leader Effects in Competition Among Teams: Evidence from a Field Intervention" was accepted by The Accounting Review.…
Fred Mittelstaedt and Tom Frecka's paper, “Career Paths and Compensation for Accounting Graduates,” co-authored with former Accountancy colleague Jennifer Sustersic Stevens, has been accepted for publication at Accounting Horizons. Here is the abstract:…
Hal White, Vincent and Rose Lizzadro Professor of Accountancy, has been selected by the senior editors of the Journal of Accounting Research (JAR) to receive a “2020 Excellence in Refereeing Award.” This honor was presented to 15% - 20% of individuals who completed refereeing work for JAR over the past calendar year. Hal’s name and school affiliation will be listed in the June 2021 JAR…
Accountancy's Sam Ranzilla participated in a live broadcast hosted by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Historical Society on March 2, “Standing up the PCAOB: A Discussion with PCAOB’s Founding Board Members and Audit Profession." Sam presented as part of Panel II: Public Company Audit Firm Representatives.…
Accountancy's Sandra Vera Muñoz and co-authors presented their paper, "Climate Risk Materiality and Firm Risk," during the inaugural "SASB Alliance: Academic Series,” which took place virtually March 4-5. The global event was attended by academicians as well as practitioners from the Big 4 accounting firms, Moody's, Morningstar, Aon, Glass Lewis and others in the ESG investing and consulting industries.…
Accountancy's Andy Imdieke was invited to serve a three-year term on the editorial board at Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory. Congratulations, Andy!…
Jessie Watkins' “Usefulness of Interest Income Sensitivity Disclosures” was recently accepted by The Accounting Review. The study examines multiple dimensions of usefulness of banks’ interest income sensitivity disclosures. We find these disclosures are predictive of future realized changes in net interest income and appear to be used by a number of market participants, including financial analysts and equity investors. These results suggest that interest income sensitivity disclosures are informative measures of interest rate risk and contradict assertions that these disclosures are useless due to lack of relevance of income sensitivity, poor modeling techniques, and/or redundancy relative to regulatory data.…
Juan Rivera and Ken Milani completed a unique trifecta ( i.e., three related articles published in consecutive issues of the same journal). Specifically, Strategic Finance published the following articles:
“The distraction effect of non-audit services on audit quality,” coauthored by Erik Beardsley, Andy Imdieke, and Tom Omer (University of Nebraska – Lincoln), has been accepted for publication at the Journal of Accounting and Economics.
From the abstract - Regulators have expressed concerns that an emphasis on non-audit services (NAS) could distract from the audit function, even for clients with minimal NAS purchases. Motivated by this concern, we examine whether a greater emphasis on providing NAS to audit clients generally (i.e., not to a specific client) can distract from the audit function, thus reducing audit quality. We find evidence of an NAS distraction effect, where a greater emphasis on NAS at the audit office-level results in more client financial statement restatements, even after controlling for client-specific NAS. Further, the association exists among clients that purchase minimal NAS, suggesting that this association relates to distraction effects in addition to independence issues examined in prior research. This study should be of interest to audit firms, audit committees, and regulators because it provides new evidence regarding issues related to a business model that includes both audit and non-audit services.…
Andy Imdieke’s Accounting, Organizations and Society (2020) paper, coauthored with Dain C. Donelson (University of Iowa), Matthew Ege (Texas A&M University), and Eldar Maksymov (Arizona State University), was cited by Joseph Brazel in a Forbes (November 16, 2020) article, "Has the revival of consulting practices at the Big 4 impacted their audit quality?"…
The article, "Managing international operations in uncertain times," coauthored by Ken Milani and Juan Rivera, is published in the November 2020 issue of Strategic Finance. This article is the first in a series of three that will examine budgeting for international operations. The second and third articles will be published in 2020 - 2021.…
Congratulations to Accountancy's Hal White, who accepted an invitation from the Editorial Board of the Journal of Accounting and Economics to serve as Associate Editor starting Jan. 1, 2021. This well-deserved editorial appointment recognizes Hal's high caliber as a JAE referee and his conscientious and thorough referee reports.…
Tonia Murphy’s paper, “The Name Game: Merging the Business and Law of Trademarks,” co-authored with Dan Cahoy (Penn State University), has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Legal Studies Education (forthcoming in Vol. 38, Issue 1, in the spring of 2021). Here is the abstract:
Choosing a good name for a product, service, or entire firm is one of the most important decisions managers make. To appreciate the full strategic picture, students must consider marketing notions of branding but also trademark law. This paper reviews the relevant marketing and legal literature. It provides a suite of hands-on exercises simulating tasks students may face in the business world, culminating in the “name game,” which requires students to balance marketing and legal considerations to choose desirable brand names for an actual product. …
Janet O’Tousa, Faculty Advisor for Notre Dame’s Beta Alpha Psi (BAP) chapter, was recently notified that the chapter has received international recognition as a Superior Chapter for their outstanding efforts during the 2019 – 2020 academic year. Achieving Superior status is a tremendous accomplishment, particularly given all the pandemic-related challenges in 2020. Thank you, Janet, for your outstanding leadership with BAP.…
CARE Research Scholar Marcel Tuijn defended his PhD thesis at Erasmus University on October 16, 2020. Marcel’s thesis is titled “Target the untargeted: essays in unconventional disclosures and policies.” Peter Easton, who attended Marcel’s defense, reports that all on the examination committee were very impressed. Marcel, his Chairman, Erik Peek, and the Rector Magnificus all expressed much appreciation to the University of Notre Dame for their help, encouragement, and collegiality and, in particular, for helping him secure an appointment at SMU’s Cox School of Business (no small feat, given this year’s difficult job market).…
‘Street’ effective tax rates are more useful in predicting companies' future tax outcomes, recent study by Erik Beardsley finds.
Street earnings metrics such as street ETRs are becoming more and more common, but regulators like the SEC are concerned that non-GAAP metrics can be misleading to readers of financial statements,” Beardsley said. “Our study should be informative to regulators and users of financial statements because it provides evidence that street ETRs are useful. …