Accountancy electronic theses and dissertations (MU)
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The items in this collection are the theses and dissertations written by students of the School of Accountancy. Some items may be viewed only by members of the University of Missouri System and/or University of Missouri-Columbia. Click on one of the browse buttons above for a complete listing of the works.
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Item Spillover effects of class action lawsuits on managerial earnings forecast characteristics(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2024) Budak, Ilbey; Shaw, KennethThis study uses securities class action lawsuits filed between 1998 and 2017 to examine the spillover effects of the lawsuits on the accuracy, precision, specificity, and horizon of peer firms' management earnings per share (EPS) forecasts. Peer firms with high ex-ante litigation risk improve their forecast accuracy, precision, specificity, and horizon following intra-industry class action lawsuits, mainly when the accusations are based on merits. The improvements in the guidance accuracy significantly decreases the likelihood of the peer firms being targeted in a class action lawsuit in the future. Peer firms with completed annual financial audits issue more accurate guidance compared to their counterparts with incomplete annual financial audits however, management EPS forecast accuracy does not incrementally improve for the high ex-ante litigation risk peer firms in the post-litigation period. Last, peers with high ex-ante litigation risk prefer bundled guidance over stand-alone guidance in the post-litigation period, aiming for a greater impact on analyst expectations.Item Debt maturity structure and forward-looking disclosure(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2023) Xie, Xinyi; Khurana, InderThis paper examines how corporate debt maturity relates to forward-looking disclosures. I find that higher levels of short-maturity debt are associated with increases in forward-looking disclosures, consistent with firms fulfilling the demand for information when faced with increased uncertainty due to refinancing risks. My results are robust to a gamut of measures of forward-looking disclosures. To address endogeneity concerns, I conduct instrumental variables estimations with three different choices of instruments and also estimate a simultaneous equations model. Overall, my results consistently show that corporate debt maturity structure shapes firms' disclosures.Item Effects of new clients on the audit quality of an audit partner's existing portfolio(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2023) Wertheim, Christopher; Khurana, InderUsing AP forms filed with the PCAOB between 2017 and 2021, I find that audit partners on new engagements experience attention costs that adversely affect the audit quality of their existing engagements. The existing engagements of a distracted partner have higher discretionary accruals and lower working capital accruals quality. Further analysis reveals that audit firm changes, rather than partner-only changes, drive the negative effects, suggesting that the engagement team's client-specific experience reduces the attention cost an audit partner experiences from a new engagement. In cross-sectional analysis, I find that audit firm tenure, audit firm size, and audit office industry specialization also mitigate the adverse effects of new clients. The attention costs resulting from new clients are distinct from partner busyness measured by the total number of clients. My findings highlight a negative consequence of audit firm rotation and show that new clients impose attention costs on audit partners that adversely affect the audit quality of their existing engagements.Item Widely publicized events and the demand for director skills: evidence from data breaches(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2022) Oberweiser, Charles; Mauldin, ElaineI examine whether widely publicized data breaches affect firms' preferences for IT skills among new board members. The widely publicized data breaches at Target and Equifax in the prior decade can be construed as events wherein individual firms' IT risk perceptions increased despite firms' actual IT risks remaining unchanged. As a result of the heightened salience of IT risk, I find that firms change their preferences for IT-skilled directors on their boards. I further consider how firms' preferences interact with the limited supply of directors with IT skills. Controlling for many determinants, I find an increase in the probability of a firm selecting a new IT-skilled director following the breach at Target, but no change following Equifax. I show several areas in which the results after Equifax appear to represent a supply constraint of IT-skilled directors. Further, I show that IT-skilled directors appointed after Equifax have lower levels of experience, even as their compensation increases.Item Do stock prices influence corporate tax behavior?(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2022) Kunz, Philip; Khurana, InderThis study examines how the firm-specific information in stock prices influences corporate tax behavior. Research demonstrates that managers learn from and respond to information contained in stock prices. However, the extent to which this information affects tax-related decisions remains unclear. I find that price informativeness increases the volatility of effective tax rates. Additional analyses demonstrate that the effect is driven by price informativeness encouraging managers to pursue additional short-term tax planning opportunities. Further, in settings where stock prices are more likely to contain tax-related information, my results are more pronounced as the proportion of taxrelated information in stock prices increases. The results of this study demonstrate that managers learn from the market when making tax planning decisions.