1,720,957 research outputs found
The impact of taxation on U.S. defined benefit pension policy
No full textThis dissertation explores the impact of taxation on the U.S. defined benefit (DB) pension policy. Tax incentives are known to be an important driver of DB policy, as DB plans in the United States offer important tax benefits—contributions to DB plans can be fully deducted from the sponsor’s taxable income within certain limits, and all earnings within the pension fund are tax-exempt.
In the first two chapters, I use the recent tax reform in the U.S., the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), to explore how changes in tax incentives affect DB pension policy in the private sector. The first chapter examines the impact of the TCJA on corporate DB pension funding policy. The TCJA’s reduction of the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% reduces the tax benefits to pension contributions. Using a hand-collected, comprehensive sample of U.S. pension sponsors, I document a substantial surge in taxpaying firms’ voluntary contributions to DB plans in the “window of opportunity” that existed between the TCJA’s passage and its new, lower tax rate going into effect. I find that taxpaying firms increase their voluntary contributions significantly more than non-taxpaying firms. I estimate total TCJA-triggered contributions at 37.9 billion. This chapter contributes to the literature exploring the effects of taxation on DB pension funding and the literature analyzing the effects of the TCJA on corporate actions.
The second chapter examines whether the TCJA acted as a driver of pension de-risking. Corporate DB pension sponsors in the U.S. have begun to consider de-risking their pension plans. Sponsors can de-risk plans by moving pension assets away from equities and towards fixed-income investments that better match the obligations, or by transferring obligations off their balance sheets entirely. Examining behavior in the window between the TCJA’s announcement and its lower tax rate going into effect, I document that the sponsors with stronger incentives to de-risk pensions tend to contribute more into their plans in that window, when deductions can still be taken at the higher tax rate. The larger contributors are much more likely to achieve near-full funding post-TCJA (which allows for de-risking to proceed). Examining behavior after the TCJA goes into effect, the larger contributors engage in more de-risking – they (i) make economically significant shifts in asset allocation toward safer investments, and (ii) transfer obligations to insurance companies (through settlements) or to beneficiaries (through lump-sum payouts). In summary, my findings point to the TCJA having triggered a permanent reorganization of the DB pension landscape in the U.S.
In the third chapter, I examine how DB pension plans fit into the larger framework of sponsoring firms’ tax avoidance strategies, bringing together the emerging literature on tax aggressiveness and the literature on pension funding. In 2010, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) mandated disclosure of uncertain tax positions on Schedule UTP, which significantly increased the threat of an IRS audit. Using Schedule UTP as a setting in which IRS scrutiny suddenly increased, I examine whether firms increased the use of pension contributions, the permissible tax deductions that are encouraged by the tax code, to reduce their tax burdens in response to rising IRS scrutiny. I find that firms increased contributions to their DB plans after the introduction of Schedule UTP. Moreover, firms expected to be relatively more affected by Schedule UTP demonstrated larger increases. However, I fail to find a negative relationship between unexpected pension contributions and changes in tax reserves accrued for uncertain tax positions, indicating that tax reserves reported in the financial statements may not be able to gauge the tax benefits from aggressive tax avoidance strategies. My findings provide evidence that firms lean towards permissible tax deductions that generate little or no tax uncertainty when IRS monitoring increases.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Essays on corporate social responsibility
No full textThe topic of this dissertation is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), with a focus on CSR disclosure and measurement. The dissertation consists of three chapters, including a literature review and two empirical studies on impression management in companies' CSR reports based on a dataset of CSR reports issued by U.S. companies between the year 2005 and 2018.
Chapter 1 is a literature review of CSR disclosure and measurement. The demand for reliable CSR data is rising rapidly, as investors increasingly use nonfinancial information as screening criteria when making investment decisions. However, critiques have arisen from both academia and the industry about CSR-rating products. Researchers, for example, have expressed concerns about the credibility of the measurements commonly used in research, such as KLD scores. This literature review aims to give users of CSR information an overview of publicly available data sources. It also investigates major products that provide CSR ratings for public companies and analyzes concerns expressed about those products. Finally, it summarizes the difficulties in constructing CSR performance scores and discusses the open questions in CSR disclosure and measurement and outlines potential directions for future research.
Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 test whether companies use images and linguistic features, respectively, for impression management purposes and the consequences of doing so. Chapter 2 is a study on the use of images in CSR reports. Prior research identifies images as a tool for corporate impression management. We examine (1) associations between CSR report image usage and motivations for impression management, (2) changes in CSR report image usage after controversial events, and (3) shareholder and award giver reactions to excessive image usage. We document that socially problematic industries exhibit higher image usage than others. We also document that firms who issue less extensive disclosure content or do not voluntarily commit to Global Initiative Reporting (GRI) guidelines in CSR reports tend to use more images. We find that firms with poorer ratings of CSR performance use more images in CSR reports and find some evidence indicating that firms increase image usage after controversial events. We find that excessive image usage is weakly associated with increased equity overvaluation and reduced shareholder activism, but no association with CSR awards. Overall, the evidence is consistent with companies strategically using images in CSR reports to enhance stakeholder perception of CSR engagement and performance. Such strategic usage has impacts on some audiences, though less than experimental evidence leads us to expect.
Chapter 3 is a study of the linguistic characteristics of CSR reports. Based on a classification of financial information disclosures as soft or hard, this study 1) uses linguistic features of CSR reports to proxy for hard and soft disclosure and to investigate whether companies strategically use the two types of information in CSR reports according to companies’ CSR performance, 2) examines the predictive power of the two types of information on future CSR performance, and 3) investigates the impacts of the information on decision-making. This study finds that companies adopt two strategies of communication. Those with low CSR strengths disclose less hard information, that is, numerical and specific information, and more soft “filler” language in their CSR reports. Those with high CSR concerns disclose more soft, forward-looking statements after controlling for government and media monitoring. What’s more, though forward-looking statements lack overall predictive power, those statements can better predict future performance when the CSR reports are assured. As for the consequences of the linguistic disclosure, hard information can weakly reduce shareholder activism and increase the likelihood of recognition via external awards. In contrast, boilerplate language does not benefit companies. Overall, the results suggest that the strategic use of linguistics in CSR reports does not significantly induce information users to make decisions in favor of the companies.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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