A Collection of Original Musical Settings to Selected Children’s Poetry for Use in the Elementary Singing Program

It is the purpose of this document (1) to present original compositions as musical settings for selected children’s poetry that can be used as suitable material to supplement the singing activities of the elementary grades; (2) to assist, through the use of these original compositions, in developing more desirable attitudes toward the appreciation of new sounds and ideas found in modern and contemporary music; and (3) to stimulate a greater appreciation of children’s poetry through the examples used in this study

Does Bank Opacity Enable Regulatory Forbearance?

Regulators are charged with closing troubled banks, but can instead practice forbearance by allowing these troubled banks to continue operating. This paper examines whether bank opacity affects regulators' ability to practice forbearance. Opacity inhibits non-regulator outsiders from accurately assessing bank risk, potentially allowing regulators to forgo intervention. Employing a sample of U.S. commercial banks during the recent crisis, I find that bank opacity is positively associated with a new measure of forbearance and negatively associated with the probability of failing during the crisis. Cross-sectional results are consistent with opacity being more important for forbearance when (1) regulators' incentives are stronger (as measured by bank connectedness) and (2) outsiders' incentives to monitor are stronger (as measured by the proportion of deposits that are uninsured). These results suggest that opacity enables regulators to forbear on connected banks to prevent financial sector contagion and to disguise forbearance from uninsured creditors. This study contributes to the literature on the role of accounting in forbearance by being the first to show the effect of bank-level opacity on the regulator's decision to intervene or forbear.Doctor of Philosoph

The importance of the internal information environment for tax avoidance

We show that firms’ ability to avoid taxes is greatly affected by the quality of the firm’s internal information environment, with effective tax rates (ETRs) substantially lower for high internal information quality firms. Furthermore, we show that firms that experience an internal information quality improvement (reduction) are reducing (increasing) their ETRs. The effect of internal information quality on tax avoidance is strongest for firms in which information is likely to play a more important role. First, firms with high coordination needs because of their dispersed geographical or business industry presence benefit more from the reduced information asymmetry and improved information coordination between their various business units, allowing for more effective tax planning. Second, firms that are operating in a more uncertain environment are able to offset some of the negative effect of uncertainty on their ETRs through the quality of their internal information system. Because lower ETRs are obtained through better internal information quality, they do not come at the cost of increased risk in the tax positions taken: unrecognized tax benefits and ETR volatility are lower in high quality information environments

Corporate Tax Planning and Industry Concentration

Recent research has documented that industry concentration has increased significantly over the past 25 years, with potentially negative consequences for productivity, innovation, and social welfare. Some have suggested that corporate tax planning, which has also increased over the same period, has contributed in part to this trend. We provide large-sample empirical evidence on whether tax planning is associated with industry concentration. We document five main results. First, we find that industry leaders engage in more aggressive tax planning relative to their closest competitors in only half of industries, and this percentage has not changed materially over our sample period. Second, we find that whether aggressive tax planning by industry leaders is associated with increased industry concentration depends critically on the extent to which their competitors are also engaging in aggressive tax planning. Third, we find that tax planning by industry leaders explains very little of the trend in increased industry concentration across the full sample. Fourth, we find that industries with plausibly tax planning-induced concentration generally do not exhibit lower productivity growth than other industries. Finally, we find that industries where leaders engage in more tax planning than competitors are not materially different from other industries in terms of key characteristics that are likely of concern to policymakers (such as industry capitalization or employment). Collectively, our findings suggest that corporate tax planning is not a material driver of increased industry concentration on average or in key industries, nor is corporate tax planning associated with reduced industry-level productivity