Motivation Academic accounting journals publish research with potential policy implications; however, the published manuscripts are often not considered by policymakers. We argue that the academic research currently being produced by accountants can have an increased policy impact. Objective Our objective is to discuss how the policy impact of the academic research currently being produced can be increased by effectively integrating, presenting, and disseminating information that is useful to policymakers. Contribution to the Academic Literature We offer the following recommendations to increase the policy impact of academic research: (1) integrate a discussion of the debate surrounding the tax policy issue under study into the manuscript; (2) explicitly offer detailed interpretations and implications of the research results; (3) proffer normative statements based on the empirical evidence; (4) provide a synopsis of the manuscript's contribution to the policy debate via a structured abstract; and (5) utilize additional communication channels to increase the visibility of the academic research to those interested in tax policy. Contribution to Decision Makers The recommendations offered in this paper can help to increase the probability that the academic tax accounting research currently being produced is both directly useful and effectively disseminated to those interested in the tax policymaking process.
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine whether focused attention on a firm by an external organization, group, or influential analyst generates greater investor awareness that can affect a firm's value and cost of capital. This study is motivated by contemporary research that provides support for the hypothesis that investors have limited attention. Prior studies have focused on how investors' limited attention has influenced their analysis of firm-specific financial data. The studies have shown that investors may have limited attention and hence pay more attention to the more salient financial statement items. This paper extends this stream of research by empirically testing to determine if external sources attract investors' limited attention to a firm. Design/methodology/approach -The paper examines the published monthly Center for Financial Research and Analysis (CFRA) research reports from 1998 through 2004 that identify firms experiencing operational problems and/or using unusual or aggressive accounting practices. To provide evidence that information appearing in CFRA research reports has not already been impounded into a firm's stock price prior to the publication of the CFRA research report, the paper tests for abnormal returns around the publication of the CFRA research reports. Second, to provide evidence that the firms' cost of capital decreases after the publication date of the CFRA research reports, the paper tests for a decrease in the bid-ask spreads after firms appear on the CFRA research reports. Findings -Support was found for the hypothesis that firms experience a significant decline in their market value in the days surrounding their appearance on the CFRA research reports. For a sample of 892 firms, the cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) for a two-day window around a firm's appearance on a CFRA research report is À1.89 percent, and the CARs for a seven-day window around a firm's appearance on a CFRA research report is À3.50 percent. Originality/value -The paper's findings suggest that the information from the fundamental analysis conducted by the Center for Financial Research and Analysis has not already been impounded into a firm's stock price before its appearance on a CFRA research report. Although the paper found a decrease in the mean difference in the bid-ask spread change, it cannot provide statistically significant support for the hypothesis that a firm's cost of capital decreases after appearing on a CFRA research report.
The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (the Act [U.S. House of Representatives 2004]) created a tax holiday encouraging firms to repatriate foreign earnings and invest that capital in the United States. However, the Act did not require a direct tracing of the spending of repatriated funds; accordingly, repatriating firms could ignore the investment prescriptions of the Act, since tax regulators were provided no legally viable basis to pursue violations of the spending requirements. We use this event to provide evidence on the effect of political scrutiny on firms' tax law compliance in a setting where regulatory enforcement plays essentially no role. Our findings suggest that repatriating firms facing greater levels of policymaker scrutiny, relative to other repatriating firms, exhibited greater compliance with the Act by increasing relative expenditures on permitted uses (R&D investment) and restraining expenditures on nonpermitted uses. We also find that the spending patterns are different only for the group of high-scrutiny firms (i.e., there is a threshold effect). Our estimates imply that the repatriation tax holiday induced, among such high-scrutiny firms alone, $0.41 of additional R&D spending per revenue dollar forgone by the Treasury under the Act. The evidence is generally consistent with the political cost hypothesis. Data Availability: The data used for this study are from the public sources identified in the text, with the exception of the marginal tax rate data provided by John Graham from Duke University.
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