Improving Respiratory Management in Children: A Collaborative Approach to Using Pediatric Specific Supplies

The abstract for this presentation can be downloaded by clicking on the blue download button

Street Earnings and Board Independence

We examine the characteristics of Street Earnings and board independence to understand how board structure shapes disclosure. We find that when boards contain fewer independent directors, exclusions from Street Earnings (1) have more predictive ability for future earnings, suggesting that the excluded expenses are less transitory, (2) are increasingly likely to occur in quarters when Street Earnings exceed analyst expectations but GAAP earnings do not, indicating that managers are more likely to use Street Earnings to meet the analyst forecast, (3) have a significantly stronger association with subsequent returns, indicating that the excluded expenses are less transparent as investors are slow to price their future earnings implications, and (4) are more strongly related to the intensity of insider trading activity. We obtain these results despite tests demonstrating that analysts reverse more management exclusions as boards become less independent. Overall, our results suggest that board independence is associated with the quality of voluntary earnings-related disclosure

Trading incentives to meet the analyst forecast

We examine stock sales as a managerial incentive to help explain the discontinuity around the analyst forecast benchmark. We find that the likelihood of just meeting versus just missing the analyst forecast is strongly associated with subsequent managerial stock sales. Moreover, we provide evidence that managers manage earnings prior to just meeting the threshold and selling their shares. Finally, the relation between just meeting and subsequently selling shares does not hold for non-manager insiders, who arguably cannot affect the earnings outcome, and is weaker in the presence of an independent board, suggesting that good corporate governance mitigates this strategic behavior

Trading incentives to meet the analyst forecast

We examine stock sales as a managerial incentive to help explain the discontinuity around the analyst forecast benchmark. We find that the likelihood of just meeting versus just missing the analyst forecast is strongly associated with subsequent managerial stock sales. Moreover, we provide evidence that managers manage earnings prior to just meeting the threshold and selling their shares. Finally, the relation between just meeting and subsequently selling shares does not hold for non-manager insiders, who arguably cannot affect the earnings outcome, and is weaker in the presence of an independent board, suggesting that good corporate governance mitigates this strategic behavior

Poor fit to the multispecies coalescent is widely detectable in empirical data

Model checking is a critical part of Bayesian data analysis, yet it remains largely unused in systematic studies. Phylogeny estimation has recently moved into an era of increasingly complex models that simultaneously account for multiple evolutionary processes, the statistical fit of these models to the data has rarely been tested. Here we develop a posterior predictive simulation-based model check for a commonly used multispecies coalescent model, implemented in *BEAST, and apply it to 25 published data sets. We show that poor model fit is detectable in the majority of data sets; that this poor fit can mislead phylogenetic estimation; and that in some cases it stems from processes of inherent interest to systematists. We suggest that as systematists scale up to phylogenomic data sets, which will be subject to a heterogeneous array of evolutionary processes, critically evaluating the fit of models to data is an analytical step that can no longer be ignored. [Gene duplication and extinction; gene tree; hybridization; model fit; multispecies coalescent; next-generation sequencing; posterior predictive simulation; species delimitation; species tree.] © The Author(s) 2013

Digital Texts and Textual Data: A Pedagogical Anthology

This collection features pedagogical artifacts created by the participants of the 2018-2019 NEH Institute for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities, “Textual Data and Digital Texts in the Undergraduate Classroom.” The artifacts--assignments, syllabi, sample student work, rubrics, workshops, and more--are grouped thematically in four sections: digital exhibits and narratives, textual analysis, distant reading and data visualization, and data-driven research. Each artifact begins with an overview in which the creator summarizes the artifact type, the intended audience, the time required, and the DH method and tool used, and provides a brief description of the artifact

The use of special items to inflate core earnings.

Investors place more weight on core earnings than transitory earnings. Consequently, the misclassification of expenses within the income statement, from core to transitory, offers a unique earnings management tool. This misclassification can influence investors' perceptions of firm performance and firm value. In this paper I document the shifting of operating expenses, such as cost of goods sold, to special items in the year the special item is reported. I find that approximately 7% of special items are not transitory, but rather are misclassified core operating expenses. This translates into $3.3 billion in shifted expenses for my sample of firms in the final year of my study alone. I find that managers shift more core operating expenses to special items preceding an equity issuance or when doing so allows the manager to meet the analyst forecast (which typically excludes special items). Finally, investors do not appear to fully disentangle expense-shifting. This action is associated with a negative abnormal return of more than 3% in the following year, suggesting investors are surprised by the recurrence of 'transitory' expenses.Ph.D.AccountingSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/124265/2/3137898.pd