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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact hosting the Super Bowl has on audit completion and financial reporting timeliness for companies headquartered in Super Bowl hosting cities.

Using 16 years of financial reporting data, this study uses the Super Bowl and related activities, combined with required filings during “busy season,” as a natural experiment to examine how audit firms navigate short-term, exogenously imposed but anticipated, audit team capacity constraints.

Companies headquartered in a city hosting the Super Bowl, during busy season, have longer audit report lags (by approximately three days, in comparison to non-hosting busy season audits) and less timely securities and exchange commission (SEC) (10-K) filings. The authors find no evidence that Super Bowl hosting affects audit fees or earnings announcement timeliness.

When confronted with anticipated capacity shocks, audit firms take longer to complete the audit, absorbing the financial costs of the delay and maintaining audit quality, resulting in less timely financial reporting.

This study demonstrates the costs of Super Bowl-related inefficiencies and contributes to our understanding of how auditors navigate capacity shocks. This study provides evidence that auditors can effectively manage business risk and continue to facilitate providing timely and accurate information to financial statement users in the face of a capacity shock.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of business volatility on employee performance.

The authors use regression analysis to examine the authors’ research question.

The results suggest that business volatility has a significant and positive impact on employee performance. Furthermore, the authors find that the relationship between business volatility and employee performance is stronger for larger firms and firms with higher labor intensity.

The study links and contributes to two streams of literature: employee/labor cost management from the accounting literature and business volatility from the management literature. Whether business volatility affects employee performance remains an interesting question that has not been definitively answered empirically. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study that directly examines the relationship between business volatility and employee performance at the firm level.

The purpose of this study is to understand the structure and dynamics of minority equity sponsorship agreements and the motivations for organizations to go beyond traditional sponsorships by acquiring minority equity in the sponsored organization.

This paper adopts a qualitative methodology and presents interview data from key actors involved in minority equity sponsorship agreements.

The findings of the paper include major characteristics of minority equity sponsorship agreements including the motivations, dynamics and resources exchanged by sponsoring firms and clubs in these relationships, based on the experiences of key actors from firms, clubs and other key stakeholders, and a conceptual model for forming and maintaining these relationships.

Sponsorships are increasingly evolving into minority equity sponsorship agreements, particularly in the European market. The findings of this study assist sponsoring firms and the executives of clubs in better understanding the dynamics and stakeholder-related consequences of these relations.

The findings of this paper illustrate the differences between minority equity sponsorship agreements and both traditional sponsorships and minority equity alliances. The findings also identify major characteristics of these relationships and the interdependencies among these characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which dynamic pricing is utilized in North American professional sports. While industries such as airlines and travel services have employed dynamic pricing for decades, professional sports is only now starting to adopt it.

The authors survey and interview high ranking executives and managers in North American sports organizations. A total of 72 managers and executives from the four major North American professional sports leagues as well as other sport properties were surveyed. Descriptive statistics and a basic regression provide insight into perceptions v. actual practice among sports organizations.

While most sports organizations perceive high usage of dynamic pricing within their organization, current procedures lag. Nearly 70 percent of respondents believe that their organizations frequently or always apply business analytics to dynamic pricing, but only 30 percent update their prices daily. Fully 50 percent of organizations do not automate decision-making processes, which is a hallmark of dynamic pricing. The perception of constant use of analytics in dynamic pricing intensifies as job title increases.

As one of the initial surveys looking at the usage of dynamic pricing in North American professional sports, this study provides a glimpse into both the perception and the reality. It suggests that there is still ample room for improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of market-level uncertainty on dividend and repurchase decisions.

Using a large data set over a nearly 50-year period, the author examines the choice to pay dividends and repurchase shares using logit and multinomial logit regressions.

Market-level uncertainty (measured by a GARCH estimate of volatility, as well as the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index) is shown to have a statistically significant impact on firms’ payout policy decisions. This impact is different for dividends and repurchases as well as for firms with differing levels of cash flows. As market uncertainty increases, firms with low cash flow levels tighten dividend policy to conserve cash while firms with high cash flow levels become opportunistic through the use of share repurchases.

The findings allow investors to better understand the connection between shifts in market-level uncertainty and corporate payout policy, specifically through the differing use of dividends and repurchases.

While prior literature on payout policy has focused on firm-level determinants, this study demonstrates that market-level uncertainty impacts firms’ payout policy decisions uniquely. Furthermore, this is, to the author’s knowledge, the first study to differentiate by relative cash flow level, demonstrating that not all cash flow levels react in the same manner.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact firm proximity to financial centers has on announcement returns and time to deal completion for mergers and acquisitions.

Using a data set of merger and acquisition activity from 1986 to 2014, target and acquiring firms are classified as rural or urban based on their geographic proximity to major financial centers. The impact of this proximity on short-term acquisition announcement returns and on the amount of time required to complete the transaction are tested.

Markets react more favorably to the acquisition of firms headquartered in a rural area, likely due to increased information advantage on the part of the acquiring firm. Furthermore, the acquisition of a rural firm requires greater time to completion.

Acquiring firms may be able to use information asymmetry to their advantage when acquiring firms located in a more rural setting with higher levels of information asymmetry. However, this requires the acquiring firm to generate an informational advantage and will also require a greater time commitment on average to complete the deal.

While prior literature has demonstrated that the distance between target and acquirer can affect acquisition returns and time to deal completion, this study adds to the literature by demonstrating that the geographic location of the target firm relative to major financial hubs can have a unique effect on mergers and acquisitions as well.

The purpose of this paper is to compare predictors of receipt of recommended first‐line pharmacotherapy in three generational cohorts of patients with new episode depression.

This retrospective database cohort study included adolescent, adult and senior Quebec Public Prescription Drug Insurance Plan beneficiaries with new episode depression, who were diagnosed by primary care physicians or psychiatrists (October 2000 to March 2001) and received pharmacotherapy. Receipt of recommended first‐line pharmacotherapy, based on the first psychoactive medication dispensed following the depression diagnosis, was defined according to Canadian guidelines.

Receipt of first‐line pharmacotherapy was documented in 52 percent, 71 percent and 50 percent of adolescents, adults and seniors, respectively. Among adolescents and seniors, diagnosis by a psychiatrist was associated with a lower likelihood of receipt of recommended pharmacotherapy. Adolescent females and senior males were more likely and adults with comorbidity were less likely to receive recommended pharmacotherapy. For all age groups, having a physician who both diagnosed the depression and prescribed the initial pharmacotherapy was associated with an increased likelihood of receiving recommended pharmacotherapy. Relational continuity of care influenced receipt of recommended first‐line pharmacotherapy. Gender differences in treatment were found in adolescents and seniors.

This paper identifies predictors of receipt of recommended first‐line pharmacotherapy in three generational cohorts of patients with new episode depression.