The Effects of Sources of Earnings Forecasts and Degree of Source Expertise on Subjects' Estimates of Earnings per Share: A Field Experiment

Motivated by previous research in accounting, finance, and psychology, this dissertation reports the results of a field experiment to determine whether two particular variables affected subjects' estimates of earnings per share. The variable used were the source of an earnings forecast and the degree of expertise of the source of the earnings forecasts. Subjects were professional employees of bank trust departments whose jobs normally entail analyzing firms and estimating the firms' future earnings per share. The research utilized Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for statistical tests of the dependent variables. The sources of earning forecasts used in this study were financial analysts and company officials (management). Earnings forecasts issued by financial analysts and management are widely disseminated in the financial press. Abundant theoretical and empirical literature exists that supports the notion that investors use financial analyst and management earnings forecasts when making investment decisions. The question of whether investors are influenced more by financial analyst or management earnings forecasts has not been answered. This dissertation provides empirical evidence about which source of earnings forecast was more influential in one particular research setting. The second experimental variable examined in this study was a degree of expertise of the sources of the earnings forecasts. A stream of social psychology literature has dealt with the variable source credibility, of which source expertise is a component. That literature, in a variety of experimental settings, consistently has reported that source expertise is a significant variable. However, the sources used in the psychology literature ranged from non expert to expert. Both financial analysts and company officials are considered to be expert sources of earnings forecasts. Thus, this study investigated whether differences in the degree of expertise of expert sources was a significant variable. For the experimental setting used in this study, the source variable was found to be a significant variable while the degree of expertise of the source was not significant. Thus, subjects' earning per share estimates reflected a preference for one earnings forecast source (company officials) over another source (professional financial analysts). On the other hand, subjects' earnings per share estimates were not affected by the degree of expertise of the source

A target based approach identifies genomic predictors of breast cancer patient response to chemotherapy

BACKGROUND: The efficacy of chemotherapy regimens in breast cancer patients is variable and unpredictable. Whether individual patients either achieve long-term remission or suffer recurrence after therapy may be dictated by intrinsic properties of their breast tumors including genetic lesions and consequent aberrant transcriptional programs. Global gene expression profiling provides a powerful tool to identify such tumor-intrinsic transcriptional programs, whose analyses provide insight into the underlying biology of individual patient tumors. For example, multi-gene expression signatures have been identified that can predict the likelihood of disease reccurrence, and thus guide patient prognosis. Whereas such prognostic signatures are being introduced in the clinical setting, similar signatures that predict sensitivity or resistance to chemotherapy are not currently clinically available. METHODS: We used gene expression profiling to identify genes that were co-expressed with genes whose transcripts encode the protein targets of commonly used chemotherapeutic agents. RESULTS: Here, we present target based expression indices that predict breast tumor response to anthracycline and taxane based chemotherapy. Indeed, these signatures were independently predictive of chemotherapy response after adjusting for standard clinic-pathological variables such as age, grade, and estrogen receptor status in a cohort of 488 breast cancer patients treated with adriamycin and taxotere/taxol. CONCLUSIONS: Importantly, our findings suggest the practicality of developing target based indices that predict response to therapeutics, as well as highlight the possibility of using gene signatures to guide the use of chemotherapy during treatment of breast cancer patients

Auditor perceptions of client narcissism as a fraud attitude risk factor

Auditing standards prescribe that the auditor should consider client management’s attitude toward fraud when making fraud risk assessments. However, little guidance is provided in the auditing standards or the existing fraud literature on observable indicators of fraud attitude. We test whether observable indicators of narcissism, a personality trait linked to unethical and fraudulent behavior, is viewed by auditors as an indicator of increased fraud attitude risk. We administered an experiment to 101 practicing auditors from one international public accounting firm who assessed fraud risk based on a scenario in which client manager narcissism (attitude) and fraud motivation were each manipulated at two levels (low and high). Our results show that narcissistic client behavior and fraud motivation are significantly and positively related to auditors’ overall fraud risk assessments. Implications of these findings for further research and the auditing profession are discussed

The Effect of Macro Information Environment Change on the Quality of Management Earnings Forecasts

The 1990s were characterized by substantial increases in the performance of and investor reliance on financial analysts. Because managers possess superior private information and issue forecasts to align investors’ expectations with their own, we predict that managers increased the quality of their earnings forecasts during the 1990s in order to keep pace with the improved forward-looking information provided by financial analysts, upon which investors increasingly relied. Using a sample of 2,437 management earnings forecasts, we document an increase in management earnings forecast precision, management earnings forecast accuracy, and managers’ tendency to explain earnings forecasts in 1993-1996 relative to 1983-1986. Given that these forecast characteristics are linked to greater informativeness and credibility, we also document that the information content of management earnings forecasts, as measured by the strength of share price responses to forecast news, increased in 1993 -1996 relative to 1983-1986. As expected, the increased information content of management forecasts primarily occurred for firms covered by financial analysts

Evaluating The Importance Of Competencies Within Accounting Information Systems Curricula

In International Education Guideline No. 11, the International Federation of Accountants identified the essential information technology (IT) competencies, knowledge, and skills required for entry-level accounting positions. These IT competencies are classified into three categories:  (1) IT concepts for business systems (nine competencies), (2) internal control in computer-based business systems (six competencies), and (3) the roles of the professional accountant in information systems (18 competencies classified into three subcategories). In this exploratory study, we surveyed accounting information systems educators about the relative importance of the IFAC competencies to prepare undergraduate students for entry-level accounting positions. The results provide accounting educators with an understanding of current practice regarding the relative emphasis placed on IT competencies in AIS courses.  Using this information, the results may be used to guide the allocation of resources within the AIS curriculum

Accounting education literature review (2017)

This review of the accounting education literature includes 103 articles published during 2017 in six journals: (1) Journal of Accounting Education, (2) Accounting Education, (3) Advances in Accounting Education: Teaching and Curriculum Innovations, (4) Global Perspectives on Accounting Education, (5) Issues in Accounting Education, and (6) The Accounting Educators’ Journal. We update 12 prior accounting education literature reviews by organizing and summarizing contributions to the accounting education literature made during 2017. Articles are categorized into five sections corresponding to traditional knowledge bases: (1) curriculum and instruction, (2) instruction by content area, (3) educational technology, (4) students, and (5) faculty. Research rigor of the empirical articles is discussed and critiqued. Suggestions for research in all areas are presented. Articles classified as instructional resources and cases published in the same six journals during 2017 are listed in appendices categorized by the relevant content area

Accounting education literature review (2020)

This review of the accounting education literature includes 88 articles published during 2020 in five accounting education journals: (1) Journal of Accounting Education, (2) Accounting Education, (3) Advances in Accounting Education: Teaching and Curriculum Innovations, (4) Issues in Accounting Education, and (5) The Accounting Educators’ Journal. We update 15 prior accounting education literature reviews by organizing and summarizing contributions to the accounting education literature made during 2020. Articles are categorized into five sections corresponding to traditional knowledge bases: (1) curriculum and instruction, (2) instruction by content area, (3) educational technology, (4) students, and (5) faculty. We summarize the research design of the empirical articles. Suggestions for research are presented. Articles classified as cases published in the same five journals during 2020 are tabulated in an appendix categorized by content area

Partial cooperative unfolding in proteins as observed by hydrogen exchange mass spectrometry

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Reviews in Physical Chemistry on 2013-1-1, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/0144235X.2012.751175.Many proteins do not exist in a single rigid conformation. Protein motions, or dynamics, exist and in many cases are important for protein function. The analysis of protein dynamics relies on biophysical techniques that can distinguish simultaneously existing populations of molecules and their rates of interconversion. Hydrogen exchange (HX) detected by mass spectrometry (MS) is contributing to our understanding of protein motions by revealing unfolding and dynamics on a wide timescale, ranging from seconds to hours to days. In this review we discuss HX MS-based analyses of protein dynamics, using our studies of multi-domain kinases as examples. Using HX MS, we have successfully probed protein dynamics and unfolding in the isolated SH3, SH2 and kinase domains of the c-Src and Abl kinase families, as well as the role of inter- and intra-molecular interactions in the global control of kinase function. Coupled with high-resolution structural information, HX MS has proved to be a powerful and versatile tool for the analysis of the conformational dynamics in these kinase systems, and has provided fresh insight regarding the regulatory control of these important signaling proteins. HX MS studies of dynamics are applicable not only to the proteins we illustrate here, but to a very wide range of proteins and protein systems, and should play a role in both classification of and greater understanding of the prevalence of protein motion