Joseph Comprix

Professor Comprix has worked as a staff accountant and accounting manager at Mead Corp. He holds a PhD in accounting from the University of Illinois and taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo and Arizona State University before joining the Whitman School. He currently teaches financial accounting in the MBA program. Professor Comprix has been a member of the Whitman faculty since 2008. He was chosen as the Whitman Graduate Faculty of the year for 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2017. He also received an Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award from the Graduate College in 2012 - one of only six awards campus-wide in 2012. Professor Comprix has published in journals such as the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Marketing, Contemporary Accounting Research, Accounting Horizons, and the Journal of the American Taxation Association.

Research Topics

• Pensions
• Accounting Restatements
• Taxation

Professor Comprix’s research is focused on pension accounting, accounting restatements, and taxation.

Selected Publications

• "Complaint Publicization in Social Media", Journal of Marketing, 2021 (with Golmohammadi, A., Havakhor, T., Gauri, D.)
• "Why You Shouldn’t Engage with Customer Complaints on Twitter", Harvard Business Review, 2021 (with Golmohammadi, A., Havakhor, T., Gauri, D.)
• "State Pension Accounting Estimates and Public Union Membership", Contemporary Accounting Research, 36(3), 1299-1336, 2019 (with Bonsall, S., Muller, K.)
• "Bias in quarterly estimates of annual effective tax rates and earnings management", Journal of the American Taxation Association, 34(1), 31-53, 2012 (with Mills, L., Schmidt, A.)
• "Empirical evidence on the impact of book-tax differences on divergence of opinion among investors", Journal of the American Taxation Association, 33(1), 51-78, 2011 (with Graham, R., Moore, J.)
• "Pension plan accounting estimates and the freezing of defined benefit pension plans", Journal of Accounting and Economics, 51(1-2), 115-133, 2011 (with Muller, K.)
• "Asymmetric treatment of reported pension expense and income amounts in CEO cash compensation calculations", Journal of Accounting and Economics, 42(3), 385-416, 2006 (with Muller, III, K.)
• "The financial expertise of CFOs and accounting restatements", Accounting Horizons, 19(3), 123-135, 2005 (with Aier, J., Gunlock, M., Lee, D.)