Shan Wang, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Accounting, College of Business Administration | Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, CA, UNITED STATES
Biography
You can contact Shan Wang at swang30@lmu.edu.
Shan Wang is an associate professor of accounting at Loyola Marymount University. She primarily teaches management accounting and data analytics courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels at LMU. Shan received her Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Oregon. Her primary research interests lie in understanding how top management team and board of directors affect accounting policies such as financial reporting, voluntary disclosure, and tax avoidance. Her research has been published in Accounting Horizons, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Journal of Management Accounting Research, and Accounting Historians Journal.
Education (5)
University of Oregon: Ph.D., Accounting 2015
California State University, Fullerton: M.S., Accounting 2010
University of California, Riverside: M.S., Chemistry 2008
Tai Yuan University of Technology, China: M.E., Chemical Engineering 2005
Tai Yuan University of Technology, China: B.E., Chemical Engineering 2002
Areas of Expertise (3)
Top Management Teams
Board of Directors
Corporate Governance
Industry Expertise (1)
Research
Articles (4)
Top Management Team Functional Diversity and Management Forecast Accuracy
Accounting Horizons (forthcoming)I examine whether TMT between-member and within-member functional diversity affect management earnings forecast accuracy. Between-member functional diversity refers to the heterogeneity of functional experts on a TMT and within-member functional diversity refers to the aggregate functional breadth of TMT members. I find that both types of functional diversity are positively associated with management forecast accuracy. Further cross-sectional analyses show that these positive associations are significant only when firms face greater information uncertainty, when TMTs are more decentralized, and when TMT members have longer joint team tenure. These findings are consistent with the information-processing perspective that TMT functional diversity can facilitate information processing and sharing and thus improve management forecast accuracy. This study contributes to the literature by shedding light on how TMT members with various functional backgrounds work together in shaping financial disclosure quality.
Effective board monitoring over earnings reports and forecasts: Evidence from CFO outside director appointments
Journal of Accounting and Public Policy2022-05-16
Prior evidence that firms adjust their board structure following accounting restatements suggests that firms expect the board to effectively monitor the firm’s financial accounting system. However, little is known about signals firms use to identify monitoring weaknesses or the types of individuals firms appoint to improve the quality of monitoring. We expand on Ghannam, Bujega, Matolcsy, and Spiropolous (2019)’s evidence that firms appoint directors with accounting experience after financial fraud by investigating whether firms that file restatements or issue highly inaccurate earnings forecasts appoint individuals with CFO experience (i.e., a subset of accounting experts) to their audit committee.
Top Management Team Intrapersonal Functional Diversity and Tax Avoidance
Journal of Management Accounting Research2020-08-25
Top management team (TMT) members have been shown to influence tax avoidance; however, prior literature has not identified whether the intrapersonal diversity of TMT functional backgrounds leads to higher levels of tax avoidance. To study this relationship, we utilize TMT intrapersonal functional diversity, which captures the average heterogeneity of the TMT members' work experience. The skills associated with intrapersonal functional diversity may allow managers to better understand and communicate with various parties related to firm tax policies, thereby facilitating tax avoidance. Overall, we find that TMTs with higher levels of intrapersonal functional diversity achieve lower cash effective tax rates and that these TMTs do not rely on tax strategies that pose high risk.
Six Decades of U.S. Tax Reform: Why Has the Average Couple's Tax Burden Increased?
Accounting Historians Journal2021-05-19
We collect basic federal tax laws over a 64-year period in order to simulate the historical effective tax rates of median income wage-earning couples. We find that effective income tax rates have decreased over the sample period; however, when payroll taxes are included in our calculations, total tax burdens have increased significantly. Interestingly, this increase in middle-class wage taxation has occurred over an historical period in which total federal tax revenue relative to GDP has remained somewhat constant. This implies that the middle class has borne an increasing relative tax burden in recent years. We hope that our analyses inform both the taxpaying public and policy makers of the historical status of middle-class wage earners.
