This paper seeks to present the moral and ethical frameworks in which to consider the effect of bribing on business and the great community; confront the cultural differences that lie between American businesses and its potential interest abroad, as well as the growing international move to implementation similar to that of the FCPA; analyze prior anti-bribery legislation and the historical events that prompted the need for a policy like the FCPA, discuss the basic elements of the policy’s two pronged approach of anti-bribery and disclosure regulation; examine several cases in the enforcement of the FCPA on American businesses; and consider the advantages and disadvantages of the statute on the performance of American businesses as a factor of total international exports.

Until recently, the role of auditors in the 2008 financial crisis had largely been overlooked by regulators and the general public. Though not responsible for the meltdown, accounting firms have been criticized – and sued – for failing to warn investors about problems at financial institutions before the crisis. Auditors can and should take steps to improve their function as independent overseers in the financial world. But there also is a gap between the expectations of auditors and their true responsibilities. As Lord Justice Lopes at the Court of Appeal in England famously said more than a century ago: The auditor “is a watchdog but not a bloodhound.” This thesis examines the so-called expectations gap and recommends ways to improve the audit quality of financial institutions.

This thesis discusses environmental partnerships, in which an NGO and corporation collaborate to address mutual goals. I begin by discussing the goals of environmental partnerships before reviewing a brief history of these partnerships, the current state of the partnerships landscape, and partnership trends across industries and within NGOs. Next, I examine the potential benefits and drawbacks to partnering for both public and private participants. Finally, strategies for corporations, NGOs, research institutes, academia, and government to enable the creation and maintenance of successful partnerships are proposed to address critical environmental issues in the absence of effective regulation.

This paper examines the impact of ethics on financial statement usefulness in 120 publicly traded companies. Because ethics are difficult, if not impossible, to quantify, Corporate Social Responsibility ratings are used as a proxy. The potential implications of this study are vast, though the main idea is that investors would be able to make better financial decisions should the hypothesis come to fruition. Contrarily, investors will also be able to avoid potentially bad investments if they can ascertain certain companies that lack ethical values. In this paper, I will discuss several facets of corporate ethics such as creative accounting in addition to delving deeper into what it means for firms to be sustainable. Using data from the Roberts Environmental Center at Claremont McKenna College in conjunction with financial data from Wharton Research Data Services and panel data techniques, I find that only within the food and beverages industry is there a correlation between ethics and financial statement usefulness. This finding lends distinct support for the hypothesis and also begs the question of how corporate ethics vary between industries.

Roughly 40 million American active and retired workers are covered by local, state or federal pension systems. The most recent financial crises has caused many of these pension systems to go up in flames, leaving politicians and economists puzzled as to where the money to pay off their future pension liabilities will come from. To add to the nightmare situation, we can expect the retirement of the baby-boomers over the next decade to exacerbate the conflagration. With less contributions coming in from the reduced number of active public employees, and more to pay out to retirees, many localities and states find themselves in the middle of the fire. This issue finds itself at the crossroads of politics, labor economics, accounting, and finance, and it will take a full-fledged effort from parties within all these fields to correct the mistakes of the past. The aim of this paper is to zero-in on the origins of this dilemma, diagnose the situation we find ourselves in today, and prescribe a solution or number of solutions to implement in the near future. To accomplish this, I will examine accounting standards, legislation, public policies, and labor demographics and attempt to provide insight as to how all of these affect the state of public pension plans. To this date we have already seen the effects pensions can have on governmental entities and it is important that people act now to prevent this issue from growing more widespread.

This paper discusses why the United States is need of international corporate tax reform. It argues that instead of the worldwide tax system it currently uses, the United States needs to transition to a territorial tax system.

Exorbitant executive compensation packages have drawn large criticism from the public eye and with the recent financial crisis and the previous tech bubble opinion on executive incentives has forced government institutions to respond. Over the past two decades the SEC and FASB have aimed to respond to the public and with three large regulation changes in the 2000s, pay for performance compensation has gone through many changes. In this study I build on previous work in an attempt to answer whether or not executives within the Information Technology industry have seen a larger decline in option compensation when compared to executives outside of the industry. Previous studies have indicated that option use has been consistently higher in the IT industry and in addition another study has showed that option use across all companies has decreased dramatically due to regulation changes. In this study I find that option use has dramatically decreased over the past decade due to regulation and that option use in the IT industry has remained consistently higher than others. I find that there is little significant evidence suggesting regulation changes have affected the IT industry at a larger rate than others. I would argue that the industry is less sensitive to regulation changes regarding option use but I do find significant evidence that the industry has seen larger decreases in option use in 2013 when compared to other industries.

This thesis examines how legal liability may be assessed in the case of an autonomous vehicle collision. It begins with a comprehensive discussion of autonomous vehicles: their defining features, a history of their development, and their current technological challenges. This paper later discusses the benefits of autonomous vehicles and why a new legal framework for their commercial production is necessary to realize these benefits. In doing so, it analyzes recent legislative efforts surrounding autonomous vehicles and their implications. Lastly, it utilizes the current product liability regime and precedent set by previous semi-autonomous vehicle collisions to suggest how liability may be determined in future legal suits.

Strong ethics are critical to the success of each member of the business world, especially accountants. Because the work of accountants is utilized by both internal and external users and can have such widespread effect on the business community, it is imperative that this work is performed with the utmost accuracy, integrity and morality. The foundation for strong ethics begins before the accountant enters the workforce, and many colleges require dedicated ethics courses for accounting majors. The purpose of this project is to analyze the effectiveness of the ethics instruction, specifically in the absence of a required dedicated ethics course, at East Tennessee State University (ETSU). Two surveys will be administered to a sample of ETSU students in several classes within the undergraduate and graduate accounting programs and the results will be analyzed to determine if students’ understanding of ethics has increased over the semester. The results of this thesis are intended to provide the ETSU College of Business and Technology with vital information about how to improve the ethics instruction for undergraduate accounting students.

This paper utilizes a short-term event study to analyze the stock price reaction of domestic and foreign M&A target firms to the 2014, 2015, and 2016 Treasury regulatory announcements aimed at restricting corporate tax inversions. The results suggest that domestic M&A target firms experience insignificant abnormal returns as a result of the Treasury overlooking tax-favored acquisitions by foreign acquirers of domestic target firms with significant locked out earnings. Meanwhile, foreign M&A target firms experience insignificant abnormal returns associated with the ineffective 2014 and 2015 Treasury regulations and experience significant abnormal returns associated with the highly effective 2016 Treasury regulations. This paper contributes to the existing debate on corporate inversions by highlighting the common techniques used to escape the United States’ tax jurisdiction, as well as shedding light on a hidden inversion alternative that has been largely overlooked by the Treasury’s regulatory actions.