Private equity and venture capital funds (“private funds”) are an increasingly important component of the economy and hold substantial ownership in other private firms. These funds have unique legal organizational structures, which academic literature has not yet accounted for. This paper...

I examine the role of heterogeneous shareholder-level taxes in organizational form decisions and in subsequent changes in investor stock ownership. Specifically, I investigate the decision to form a master limited partnership (MLP), which is a tax-advantaged entity for tax-sensitive shareholders...

Structural equation modeling (SEM), an empirical methodology underutilized in archival research, enables empirical researchers to examine paths linking constructs in complex models. Specifically, SEM consists of two components: an empirical measurement model that generates common factors from...

We argue that the association between auditor industry specialization and audit quality depends on how long the auditor has been a specialist. We measure audit quality using absolute discretionary accruals, income-increasing discretionary accruals, and book-tax differences. Our results, based on...

Prior research finds that firms pay special dividends before a dividend tax increase. We examine the real effects of this decision, finding that firms incur costs to pay these tax-motivated special dividends. Specifically, firms reduce investment and repurchases to pay these dividends. Further,...

We exploit a unique setting to examine how managerial and economic connections affect the current and former subsidiaries (“subsidiaries”) of a parent firm undergoing a restatement and bankruptcy. The demise of Enron and the varying nature of ties between Enron and its four publicly traded...

Recent U.S. tax proposals under various names (e.g., wealth taxes, estate tax reform, etc.) center on mark-to-market (MTM) taxation, which eliminates investors’ ability to defer or avoid capital gains taxes. To provide insight on potential effects of these tax proposals, we exploit a unique...

Using several audit quality measures, Minutti-Meza (2013, MM) argues that controlling for client characteristics through matching eliminates the association between auditor industry specialization and audit quality. Gaver and Utke (2019, GU) argue that this result is unstable across matching...

Private equity (PE) funds are increasingly important to the economy and now dominate capital markets (e.g., capital formation). However, lack of understanding of PE funds among accounting academics currently prevents accounting research in this area. In this paper, we first describe the PE fund...

Private equity (PE) funds are growing to dominate capital markets. In conjunction with this growth, secondary markets for PE stakes have also grown. Innovative recent work investigates the valuation discount that sellers of PE stakes incur and attributes this discount entirely to the illiquidity...