Scholars @Bentley (Bentley University)
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CLIC Newsletter - Fall 2023
Full text linkPage 1: An Interview with Chinese Professor Yu Lao Shi
Page 3: 4 Restaurant Reviews
Page 7: Event Recap: LCB-Chinese Learn & Lounge (中⽂聚会）
Page 8: When in Rome: Touristic Spots and Landmarks
Page 11: Interview with Nick Luther
Page 13: Event Recap: Study Abroad: Italy Crash Course
Page 14: When in Barcelona: Touristic Spots and Landmarks
Page 17: Interview with Kyle Westfall
Page 19: Recipe: Curry Chicken
Page 20: When in Peru: Touristic Spots and Landmarks
Page 22: Bentley University: Faculty Led International Courses
Page 24: When in Chile: Touristic Spots and Landmarks
Page 27: Newest Language Partner - MAIDA
Page 28: Newest Language Partner - TAFFY
Page 29: Artificial Intelligence and University
Page 31: Recipe: Orange Chicken
Page 32: Interview with Luka Gabadadze
Page 34: Event Recap: Mahjong Hub
Page 35: An Overview of E-Waste and Smartphone
Page 37: Cultural Spotlight: Mexico
Page 39: Recipe: Flour Tortilla
Page 40: Challenges of Translating Humor
Page 41: Event Recap: Pizza Making
Page 42: Students Work Exhibition
Page 43: Spanish Student Work: La unidad hace la fuerz – Alicia Paz
Page 43: Spanish Student Work: La oveja negra y el agua de oro - Chase Fritzell
Page 44: Spanish Student Work: Journey with the Spanish Language - Robert Chindamo
Page 45: Spanish Student Work: Journey with the Spanish Language - Samantha Marroquin
Page 46: Spanish Student Work: Los problemas y peligros en la frontera México/Estados Unidos – Ella Brown
Page 47: Spanish Student Work : Un Jardin de Amor - Hannah Angell
Page 48: Chinese Student Work: ⾦融科技与⽹络安全的融合 – Hunter Smith
Page 49: Chinese Student Work: 同学们的购物习惯 - Korin Wang
Page 50-51: Spring Courses
Page 52: New Chinese Courses Proposed by Yu Lao Shi
Page 53: New French Course: Francophone Entrepreneurs (MLFR 398)
Page 54: Our Staf
Spending on Phased Clinical Development of Approved Drugs by the US National Institutes of Health Compared With Industry
Full text linkThe launch of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health to advance new cures and address public concern regarding drug prices has raised questions about the roles of government and industry in drug development.
This cross-sectional study examined NIH funding for published research reporting the results of phased clinical trials of drugs approved between 2010 and 2019 and compared the findings with reported industry spending estimates. Data analysis was performed between May 2021 and August 2022 using PubMed data from January 1999 through October 2021 and NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools Expenditures and Results data from January 1999 through December 2020
Former United States Political Figures on S&P 500 Boards: Three Essays
Full text linkCorporate political activity has been considered an increasingly important component of corporate strategy (Schuler, et al. 2019). Corporate political activity research examines how corporations interact with political officials to attempt to influence their political environment in ways that benefit their economic activity (e.g., Funk & Hirschman, 2017; Lawton, et al. 2013). In this dissertation I present three novel research studies on one area where corporate political activity research is underdeveloped, the presence and impact of government experienced directors, individuals who were either elected or appointed to work for the United States (U.S.) government and then served as a director on an S&P 500 company’s board. Chapter one is an empirical study that presents and scrutinizes hand-collected data on government experienced directors who served on S&P 500 boards over a four-year period, January 1, 2017 until December 31, 2020. Director biographies included in DEF 14A SEC filings from S&P 500 firms were individually examined to identify directors with relevant political experience. This contributes to the literature by providing a complete mapping of former U.S. political figures on S&P 500 boards over a multi-year period and provides a detailed analysis of the market for government experienced directors based on their political party affiliations. In contrast to previous research, I include “non-partisan directors”, those who had served in a qualifying government position without any publicly stated political party affiliation. Including only directors with political experience and an affiliation to either the Democratic or Republican parties provides an incomplete picture of former politicians of corporate boards. Political experience, knowledge, and connections are not exclusive to individuals with affiliations to political parties. By party affiliation, Republican, Democrat, and non-partisan, I compare industries and types of firms where government experienced directors are hired, the board committee roles they were hired for, as well as individual level characteristics, including age, ethnicity, gender, and more. I find that government experienced directors are a common feature of S&P 500 boards. Specifically, there is general heterogeneity between firms and homogeneity within them as firms with more than one government experienced director often hired from the same party. While directors with ties to both major political parties were hired at roughly similar levels, there was variation between parties on the industries where they were hired, the committee roles they held, their political work experience, and several other individual level characteristics. Furthermore, during the study period, the numbers of government experienced directors decreased, and board political party affiliations became more partisan. These findings suggest government experienced directors are hired not only based on their government experience but also for their ideological beliefs. These findings raise concerns from both the agency theory and resource dependency theory perspectives, and lead to questions of the impact of the ideological beliefs of top management teams on other corporate governance activities, especially corporate political activities
Audit Firm Culture: An Evolution of the Audit Profession in Response to External Forces
Full text linkThe COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting business operations throughout the world, including the working procedures of audit professionals. Yet, to date, research on COVID-19’s impact on auditing is limited. This is despite its potential long-term implications. Thus, my dissertation uses a mix of research methods to examine auditors’ response to, and regulators’ evaluation of auditors’ response to, COVID-19.
The first paper (co-authored) synthesizes research on audit firm culture (AFC) over the past decade, reviewing recent developments in research on AFC and its influence on audit quality and auditors’ work attitudes. Using a three-phase model based on prior research and professional guidance, our synthesis shows that AFC is most oriented toward quality if leadership emphasizes professionalism over commercialism, promotes ethical judgments, and facilitates learning. We contribute to both research and practice by presenting opportunities where future research can enhance our understanding of how AFC can be better managed by audit firms.
The second paper (co-authored) uses crisis management and organizational culture theories to understand COVID-19’s impact on key organizational mechanisms that embed and transmit AFC. Semi-structured interviews conducted with 18 U.S. audit engagement leaders reveal that COVID-19 is disrupting the collaborative culture of audit firms. Respondents describe paying greater attention to the key relational systems (e.g., communications) that exist within audit teams in order to minimize affective consequences (e.g., stress) and maintain high audit quality. They also express apprehension that virtual work practices do not result in an effective on-the-job learning culture, but acknowledge that such practices facilitate greater knowledge sharing across geographical locations.
The third paper (solo-authored) analyzes the PCAOB’s inspection reports for audits completed from 2018 to 2020 by the top eight largest accounting firms, examining inspection deficiencies and the associated implications for audit quality. I find that despite the disruption of COVID-19, there is some, albeit limited, evidence to suggest that audit firms are maintaining a high level of audit quality. Further, despite concerns that COVID-19 may impact audit risks for fraud and going concern, there are no deficiencies among these two audit areas in 2020. This study contributes to the emerging literature on COVID-19’s impact on audit quality
Towards a Better Understanding of the Development of Collaborative Consumption Pricing
Full text linkWith the rise of social platforms, consumers started creating value by sharing human and physical resources. As a result, there has been an increase in collaborative consumption. My papers focus on the peer-to-peer travel accommodation service Airbnb, a popular online market for short-term housing rentals.
In paper one, an integrated framework for collaborative consumption pricing is developed by adopting the hedonic demand theory and leveraging the multilevel modeling method that accounts for various factors from nested data. This paper contributes to the research literature by extending the usage of multilevel modeling across cities to consider city effects and broadening the research span of the multilevel research method in the hospitality industry. The results show that collaborative consumption pricing is dependent on product factors, social factors, and economic factors.
Paper two determines the effect of different regulations on listing prices. This paper contributes to the literature 1) by providing a first overview of overarching regulatory practices and their impact on Airbnb prices, 2) by applying a “Difference-in-Difference” (DD) model and synthetic control methodologies together, and 3) by constructing a rich dataset of twenty-four cities over five years from Airbnb, 4) by developing severity indices to evaluate different regulation practices. It is shown that these regulatory changes lead to price increases, indicating a potential downward trend in Airbnb usage.
Paper three explores the influence of reputation mechanisms on pricing as well as the relationship of different ratings by applying panel data, fixed effects, and directed acyclic graphs (DAG) methodologies. An essential aspect of the sharing economy (SE) is the establishment of feedback rating systems to foster trust in peer-to-peer platforms. The fixed-effect model reveals that cleanliness is the only significant attribute that directly impacts the pricing. The DAG analysis shows that all rating factors are associated with each other. This paper is the first example of employing the DAG methodology to examine the relationship among ratings in the SE literature and presents a theoretical model of how ratings affect each other
Columnas: The Honors Program Newsletter at Bentley University
Full text linkPage 1: SOCIAL MEDIA—A VEHICLE FOR SOCIAL CHANGE OR VIRTUE SIGNALING? ~ By Debayan Sen ’23
Page 2: WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ROBOTICS REPLACE THE HUMAN WORKER? ~ By Hailey Jennato ’24
Page 3: HOW TO HEALTHILY COMMUNICATE IN A RELATIONSHIP: NO, NOT JUST A ROMANTIC ONE ~ By Gabe Holmes ’26
Page 4: THE W SLANT ~ By Daniel Furze ’2
Interactional challenges for non-native speakers of English in emergency telephone calls
Full text linkThis paper investigates interactional challenges experienced in calls to emergency services with native English speaking (NS) call takers and non-native speaking (NNS) callers. Case studies of three problematic NNS/NS calls from a collection of emergency service calls were conducted using a conversation analytic approach. These calls were selected from publicly available recordings which were made by callers who were hearably NNS of English. The analysis shows how accents, grammatical and other linguistic choices led to related challenges in the pragmatics of communication (including procedures for sequential organization such as adjacency pairs, repair initiation, confirmation requests, presequences and story solicits). Routine procedures for repair or confirmation can produce hidden disjunctures and/or inaccurate or missing information as a result of the NNS/NS issues in the interaction. These challenges may contribute to failures of intersubjective understanding in the calls, affect the accuracy of information obtained, and extend the length of the call, which may impact the successful provision of emergency services to NNS callers
Health and Healthcare in the Financial Reporting and Audit Environments
Full text linkThis dissertation is comprised of three papers that integrate analyses of health, health crises, and healthcare entities in the financial reporting and audit processes. The first paper considers how physical health influences audit outcomes via auditors’ cognitive processing. The second paper considers a global health disruption that impacts the audit process. In the third paper, I examine financial and tax reporting of hospital entities. I describe each paper in further detail below.
The first paper, co-authored with Rani Hoitash, examines whether influenza (flu), a potential threat to the conduct of public company audits, is associated with audit outcomes. Because the peak months of flu season overlap with audit busy season, audit offices most impacted by the flu may be adversely affected. The demanding nature of audit busy season and the culture of audit firms may compel employees to go to work sick, a phenomenon known as presenteeism. When auditors go to work with flu-like symptoms, cognitive functioning is impaired. This impairment may influence auditors’ ability to exercise judgment and professional skepticism, leading to adverse outcomes. Using data collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) we find that the filing of audit reports is delayed and audit quality suffers in audit offices most impacted by the flu. The observed effects of health impairments on company outputs have broad implications for both the audit profession and workplaces as a whole.
The second paper, co-authored with Rani Hoitash and Udi Hoitash, examines the likelihood and consequences of late filings during COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced unprecedented challenges to the audits of public companies. In response, the SEC made available a unique one-time 45-day extension to file the audited annual report. We leverage the first year of the pandemic, in which audits completed prior to the national emergency serve as a control group, to execute a difference-in-differences design. We observe a significant increase in the likelihood of a late filing during the pandemic. We further manually identify late filings that are attributable to the auditor. Utilizing this data, we observe a decline in audit quality only when the delay is not attributed to the auditor, indicating that auditor-provoked delays are effective in maintaining quality. Additionally, while we observe an increase in the number of new modified going concern opinions, we also observe a decline in the number of Type I going concern errors made by auditors during the pandemic. Our study informs regulators about the impact of the unprecedented SEC filing extensions.
The third paper, sole-authored, focuses on reporting by a healthcare entity: hospitals. This paper examines extant research on hospital reporting and offers suggestions for future research. Early hospital studies have compared and evaluated financial reporting and other outcomes between different hospital ownership types, while more recent research has focused on non-profit hospital reporting. Within the latter topic, I synthesize studies that examine tax-exemption, its benefits, audits, and the competing incentives of non-profit management. For each subsection, I identify potential data sources and future research opportunities. I conclude that there is ample opportunity for meaningful research in this field of the nonprofit and accounting literatures
Three Papers on Sell-Side Financial Analysts
Full text linkThis first paper (co-authored) tests the effect of Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II), which entered into force on 3 January 2018, on European-based sell-side financial analysts. We find that MiFID II, in part, unbundles brokers’ execution and research services. We assess the effectiveness of MiFID II in unbundling and find that the trading volume generated by the brokers that issued recommendation revisions declined significantly after the enactment of MiFID II. Further, in addition to a smaller price reaction to EU broker analysts’ recommendation revisions in the post period than in the pre period, these broker analysts appear to provide less accurate forecast and cover fewer firms, indicating a “chilling effect” of MiFID II. However, a silver lining is that these broker analysts forecast bias decreases and forecast frequency stays the same.
The second paper (solo-authored) tests how US state-level social distancing polices, effected since mid-March 2020, are related with US-based sell-side financial analysts’ research, in the period ends in June 2020. Preliminary forecast accuracy related tests show that analysts gain “non-local advantage” after the effective of the policy and this is especially for the case when firms do not issue earnings guidance. Further results show that the seriousness of COVID-19 and the county-level political attitudes does not replace the results of the stay home-work safe policy, and that nonlocal analysts gain more advantage for firms in industries that are less sensitive to COVID-19.
The third paper (solo-authored) tests whether and how sell-side financial analysts in the United States react to the holidays of their country of origin. Results show that that during the one to three days period before these holidays, analysts’ forecasts are less biased; but during the one to three days period after these holidays, analysts’ forecasts are more accurate, and recommendations are related with more market reactions. Results stay when excluding US holidays, Mondays and Fridays, January or December, and stay when controlling country-level trust or hierarchy or individualism
CLIC Newsletter - Fall 2022
Full text linkPage 1: Interview with our Past LP Manager: Daniel Alegre
Page 4: Event Throwback: Culture Fest Dance Class
Page 5: Recipe: Red Braised Pork Belly
Page 6: National Sports of Different Countries
Page 14: Student Work: Un Menu Francais by Jamilya Tuleutayeva
Page 15: Interview International Freshman
Page 16: Event Throwback: Calligraphy
Page 17: Restaurant Recommendations with Kevin
Page 21: Student Work: Self-Identity Poem by Carli Van Haute
Page 22: Interview with International Businessman: Luis Florez
Page 24: Recipe: Arroz con Maiz
Page 25: Student Work: Poesia in Inglese, Italiano e Spagnolo by Matilde Ronchi
Page 26: E-Sports: League of Legends
Page 28: Interview with International Alumni
Page 30: Recipe: Venezuelan Cachapas
Page 31: How Different Countries are Recovering from COVID
Page 33: Student Work: Entre Favas y el Caribe by Ramiro Garcia
Page 34: Event Throwback: Cultural Banquet
Page 35: Student Work: Poem by Silvana Davi
Page 36: Interview International Professor
Page 38: Our Staf