The Review of Economics and Statistics2021open access
We estimate how the mortality effects of temperature vary across U.S. climate regions to assess local and national damages from projected climate change. Using 22 years of Medicare data, we find that both cold and hot days increase mortality. However, hot days are less deadly in warm places while cold days are less deadly in cool places. Incorporating this heterogeneity into end-of-century climate change assessments reverses the conventional wisdom on climate damage incidence: cold places bear more, not less, of the mortality burden. Allowing places to adapt to their future climate substantially reduces the estimated mortality effects of climate change.
Accounting, Organizations and Society202195, 101279open access
Accounting studies document that performance evaluations may cause evaluatees to experience job-related stress and suggest there is a positive relationship between the frequency of such evaluations and stress. In this paper we aim to modify this suggestion. Since performance evaluations also involve a periodic discharge of accountability for evaluatees, we expect that low evaluation frequency may cause stress as well. Drawing on the neurobiological literature on allostatic load, we argue that the prolonged anticipatory threat of being held accountable adds to stress buildup over time. Such buildup is often not consciously experienced but shows in hormonal patterns that are associated with delayed job-related dysfunctions such as burnout. We conducted a one-year field experiment, in which we observed enhanced stress-hormone levels (cortisol and thyrotropin) in participants assigned to a 12-week performance evaluation cycle compared to participants remaining in a 6-week cycle. We found no corresponding difference between conditions on self-reported mental fatigue. This confirms our expectation and suggests that adopting a neurobiological view of job-related stress provides a complementary account of the effect of performance evaluation on both immediately experienced and delayed manifestations of job-related stress.
Accounting, Organizations and Society202194, 101276open access
The received narrative about accounting organisation largely originates from within the walls of the profession, assuming closure, and is not sufficiently informed by an understanding of the actions, experiences and perspectives of those who did not engage in the professional project. Our data offer another perspective, that of the majority of accountants in the field, who prospered for a prolonged period without pursuing strategies of closure or seeking a corporate identity. With a Bourdieusian framing, we explore a rich dataset of almost 3000 individual records from the 1901 and 1911 Irish censuses, supplemented by professional records and trade directories, to examine the diversity of the accounting field in Dublin. Our exploration of this cohort, largely hidden from history, reveals a majority of accountants acting independently in the field, with no strategies to act in concert or to erect occupational barriers to entry. The small minority of accountants pursuing professionalisation came from a background that was already elite. However, in a late colonial context with a weakened state, this broader group of accountants did not present as either excluded or subaltern. Instead, what emerges is evidence of a wider cadre of “Plain” accountants displaying a level of economic progress over a ten-year period that outstrips that of their professionalised peers. Conscious of the ‘imprecision of hierarchies’ in the field (Bourdieu 1988, p. 20), this allows us to consider the role of ‘accountant’ separate from the idea of professional accreditation and to question the seeming inevitability of their conflation.
Accounting, Organizations and Society202195, 101277open access
Because of their complexity and principle-based nature, the creation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) engendered significant uncertainty that modified the order of things within large accounting firms. This motivated them to establish Professional Practice Function (PPF) units to try to ensure a credible degree of consistency in applying IFRS across a wide range of financial reports at the international level. We study backstage dynamics surrounding a PPF national unit in one of the Big Four firms. We focus on the rise of the PPF as an expert-based control device within the firm, and the role PPF members play as knowledge brokers to interpret IFRS. Our investigation is carried out through ethnographic fieldwork supplemented by interviews with PPF members and field auditors. The analysis brings forward some of the organizational dynamics surrounding PPF members' efforts to establish their credibility as intermediaries both hierarchically, between administrative partners and field auditors, and epistemically, between the unifying logic of IFRS and auditees' financial reporting specifics. Ultimately, our analysis points to the role of the PPF as a gatekeeping or internal control device that mediates between different pools of knowledge to monitor the firm's reputation risk against IFRS implementation challenges. From a legal perspective, our ethnography documents how accounting “law” is made at the firm level and how PPF members strive for consistency – in spite of significant epistemological and organizational challenges. Our ethnography also shows that complex IFRS interpretation issues are not resolved through one person's judgment; instead, the firm's structure surrounding the PPF allows for the constitution of inter-individual judgment that transcends national, sectoral, and (sometimes) organizational boundaries. Finally, we see one important contribution of our work as helping reveal the limits of large conceptual categories such as “auditors”, which tend to downplay the dynamics of convoluted practice relationships.