About

Erik Beardsley is an Assistant Professor of Accountancy at the Gies College of Business, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a position he has held since 2022. He previously served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame from 2016 to 2022. Beardsley's educational background includes a Ph.D. in Accounting from Texas A & M University obtained in 2016, a Master of Science in Public Administration with a focus on Taxation from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in 2009, and a B.B.A. in Accounting & Finance from the same university in 2008. His research focuses on various aspects of accounting, including earnings management, audit quality, tax strategies, and the impact of non-audit services on audit outcomes. Beardsley's work has been published in reputable journals such as the Journal of the American Taxation Association, the Journal of Accounting, Auditing & Finance, and Contemporary Accounting Research. He has been recognized for his teaching excellence, being listed as an excellent teacher by students at the University of Illinois in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Beardsley also contributes to the academic community through his role as an educator in courses like Advanced Income Tax Problems, where he introduces students to U.S. federal taxation of business entities and develops their technical and data analysis skills.

Research topics

• Business
• Accounting
• Economics
• Psychology
• Actuarial science
• Marketing
• Finance
• Monetary economics
• Econometrics
• Financial economics

Selected publications

• An Examination of Office-Level and Client-Level Non-Audit Services and Audit Quality

  Accounting Horizons · 2026-02-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  SYNOPSIS Prior academic studies have investigated client- or office-level non-audit services (NAS) and found either positive effects through knowledge spillover or negative effects due to independence impairment or distraction. This study complements existing research by examining whether the effects of office-level and client-level NAS on audit quality vary with an audit office’s NAS focus. Specifically, we find a nonlinear association between office-level NAS provision and audit quality, with client misstatement rates lowest when the office provides moderate levels of NAS. Tax-related NAS drives these results. Further analysis reveals that the office-level focus on NAS affects the association between client-level NAS purchases and audit quality. This study enhances our understanding of the office-level and client-level dynamics of NAS provision to audit clients, offering regulators and practitioners relevant insights as they navigate this issue. Data Availability: All data sources are noted in the manuscript. JEL Classifications: M4; M41; M42.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Voluntary Tax Forecasts as a Signal of Future Firm Performance

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Managers’ Stock Price Incentives and Earnings Management Using Tax Expense

  Journal of the American Taxation Association · 2023-09-13 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT This study examines the association between stock price incentives (portfolio delta) and earnings management using tax expense, as well as whether this association varies with opportunities to manage earnings. Prior research suggests stock price incentives provide a positive “reward effect” and a negative “risk effect,” causing managers to trade off these countervailing effects when managing earnings. We posit that greater opportunities to manage earnings alter the risk-reward tradeoff related to portfolio delta, potentially changing the association between stock price incentives and earnings management. We do not find a significant association between stock price incentives and earnings management using tax expense on average. However, the association is positive and significant when tax-related earnings management opportunities are sufficiently high, consistent with opportunities mitigating the risk effect of delta. Collectively, our results suggest that managers respond to stock price incentives differently depending on their opportunity sets. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Interim Tax Reporting Accuracy: Determinants and Consequences

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• What's My Target? Individual Analyst Forecasts and Last-Chance Earnings Management

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• What's my target? Individual analyst forecasts and last-chance earnings management

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2021 · 31 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Business
  • Econometrics
  • Economics
  PublisherDOI

• The Distraction Effect of Non-Audit Services on Audit Quality

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-01-01 · 14 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Street vs. GAAP: Which Effective Tax Rate Is More Informative?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Street versus <scp>GAAP</scp>: Which Effective Tax Rate Is More Informative?*

  Contemporary Accounting Research · 2020 · 26 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Business
  • Accounting
  • Monetary economics

  ABSTRACT This study investigates how sophisticated market participants use tax‐based information by examining whether analysts' street effective tax rates (ETRs) are informative. When assessing firm performance, analysts exclude items they believe do not reflect current performance, resulting in “street” metrics such as street ETR. However, evidence on the properties of the components of street earnings is limited. Examining the informativeness of street ETRs is important because taxes are a significant component of earnings, and the extent to which analysts understand taxes and incorporate them into their analyses is not clear. Using a hand‐collected sample of analyst reports, we find that while approximately 35% of street ETRs have at least one tax‐specific exclusion, over 90% reflect the tax effects of pre‐tax exclusions. Further, both tax‐specific exclusions and the tax effects of pre‐tax exclusions significantly contribute to differences between GAAP and street ETRs. Consistent with analysts' understanding of the implications of tax and nontax exclusions, our results suggest that street tax metrics exhibit greater predictive ability about future tax outcomes and provide more information to investors than GAAP tax metrics. We also find that ETR exclusions are of higher quality when the magnitude of the potentially excluded item is greater and when managers disclose pro forma earnings. Collectively, our findings suggest that analysts understand taxes, but selectively exert effort to incorporate tax‐based information into their assessment of firm performance. Our study should be informative to regulators and users of financial information because it provides evidence regarding the usefulness of street earnings metrics.

  PublisherDOI

• Audit Office Industry Diversity and Audit Quality

  Journal of Accounting Auditing & Finance · 2020-07-29 · 14 citations

  article1st author

  This study examines the association between the industry diversity of an audit office and audit quality, where industry diversity is the extent to which clients differ by industry classification. We find a negative association between industry diversity and audit quality that is robust to controlling for other audit office and client characteristics. We observe this association while holding the level of audit office specialization or expertise in a particular industry constant. The association is most apparent at the low end of the distribution of industry diversity, where audit offices with the least diverse client portfolios have the highest audit quality. We also find that the association exists for both small and large audit offices as well as both industry specialists and non-industry specialists. However, we do not observe the association when the office audits clusters of clients, where clusters are three or more clients in the same industry.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Thomas C. Omer

  10 shared

• Andy Imdieke

  University of Notre Dame

  4 shared

• John R. Robinson

  Texas A&M University

  4 shared

• Dennis R. Lassila

  Texas A&M University

  4 shared

• Nathan C. Goldman

  North Carolina State University

  3 shared

• Paul A. Wong

  University of California, Davis

  3 shared

• Connie D. Weaver

  Texas A&M University

  3 shared

• Michael Mayberry

  University of Florida

  3 shared

Awards & honors

• List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, Univ…
• Outstanding Reviewer in Reviewer Recognition Program, Contem…