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, Contemporary Accounting Research, Accounting Horizons, and the Journal of the American Taxation Association.

Research Topics

• Pensions
• Accounting Restatements
• International Financial Reporting Standards

Professor Comprix’s research is focused on pension accounting, accounting restatements, and International Financial Reporting Standards.

Selected Publications

• "State Pension Accounting Estimates and Public Union Membership", Contemporary Accounting Research, 36(3), 1299-1336, 2019 (with Bonsall, S., Muller, K.)
• "Setting Expected Rates of Return on Pension Plan Assets: New Evidence on the Influence of Audit Committee Accounting Experts", Research in Accounting Regulation, 29(2), 159-166, 2017 (with Guo, J., Zhang, Y., Zhou, N.)
• "Does Auditor Size Matter? Evidence from Small Audit Firms", Advances in Accounting, 31(1), 11-20, 2015 (with Huang, H.)
• "Earnings management and the allocation of net periodic pension costs to interim periods", Advances in Accounting, 29(1), 27-35, 2013 (with Blankley, A., Hong, K.)
• "Firm location and earnings management: Korean evidence", Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting & Economics, 19(3), 292-317, 2012 (with Nam, H., Choi, J., Kwon, H.)
• "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.)
• "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.)
• "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.)
• "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.)