About

Jennifer Blouin is the Richard B. Worley Professor of Financial Management and the EY Professor of Accounting at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, where she also serves as the Chairperson of the Department of Accounting. Her research centers on the role of taxation in firm decision making, exploring how taxes influence various corporate behaviors including capital structure, asset pricing, payout policy, and multinational firm behavior. Her work has been published in top-tier academic journals such as the Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, National Tax Journal, and the Journal of the American Taxation Association. Professor Blouin has received funding from notable research programs and was recognized as a Golub Faculty Scholar for the 2009-2010 period. She teaches courses on taxation and business strategy to undergraduate, MBA, and PhD students, developing frameworks that analyze the impact of taxes on business decisions across different contexts. Her background includes a PhD in Accounting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BS from Indiana University Bloomington.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Business
• Microeconomics
• Economics
• Monetary economics
• Industrial organization
• Accounting
• Finance
• Law

Selected publications

• The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and Internal Capital Market Efficiency: The Role of Accounting

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Accounting for the profits of multinational enterprises: Double counting and misattribution of foreign affiliate income

  Journal of Public Economics · 2025-11-12 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  • A fundamental debate about international tax policy has ensued over the past decade, leading to recently enacted (or proposed) reforms that represent radical departures from the status quo. • To guide international tax policy, researchers must measure both the distribution of MNE income across jurisdictions, in a way that faithfully represents where the income was generated, and the rate of tax paid by the MNEs on their income in each different jurisdiction. The accounting methods used to report MNE activity affect the measurement of each of these constructs. The measurement issues we document impact to various degrees all MNE data that are disaggregated by jurisdiction. • Overlooking the accounting conventions that guide MNE data can result in two kinds of mismeasurement – duplicative counting of income and misattribution of income. The first error – duplicative or “double” counting – arises when a researcher counts the same dollar of MNE income more than once by including it in two or more different jurisdictions. The second error – misattribution – arises when a researcher fails to recognize a dollar of MNE income in the jurisdiction where it was earned. • The accounting issues we highlight in this paper affect estimates of the aggregate profits of MNEs, measurement of effective tax rates, the amount of revenue losses governments experience due to profit shifting, as well as estimates of the sensitivity or semi-elasticity of income to taxes. • For example, an influential study published just prior to the passage of the 2017 U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act estimated that between $77 and $111 billion dollars in U.S. revenue was being lost to profit shifting each year. When we reexamine that study ( Clausing 2016 ), correcting for double counting and misattributed MNE income, while otherwise holding constant the study’s methodology, this estimate drops to $11 billion a year. Given the perception that multinational enterprises (MNEs) engage in extensive tax planning, ending base erosion and profit shifting activity is a priority on many national agendas. Yet the actual level of such activity is subject to debate. In this paper, we provide guidance on how to accurately measure country-level MNE income using the datasets commonly used in research on profit shifting. This issue is of global concern, as any economic data that reports profits by jurisdiction must use an established accounting method to report the activity of the MNEs’ indirectly owned foreign affiliates. We explain how the accounting method could lead a researcher to double count income or to attribute it to the wrong jurisdiction. Such errors not only affect measures of the MNEs’ country-level profits, but also bias researchers’ estimates of the sensitivity of income to taxes. Although we focus our analysis on data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), we illustrate the consequences of such mismeasurement across a variety of studies relying on a variety of data sources.

  PublisherDOI

• Factors Influencing Mental Health Outcomes Amongst Senescent County Residents

  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · 2025-03-18 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Despite increased mental health awareness and expanded healthcare services in recent years, older adults face significant gaps in mental health support. The purpose of this study was to examine factors affecting mental health among elderly residents in Greenville County, South Carolina, using the ecological model of health. METHODS: The ecological model of health was used as a conceptual base for a convenience survey of older adults participating in a community involvement program. These results were analyzed using structural equation modeling. RESULTS: The findings revealed that outlooks on aging significantly influence mental health, particularly through personal and relational factors. This study also found that there is a relationship between the concept of healthy aging and overall mental health. CONCLUSIONS: This study underscores the need for targeted interventions that enhance social engagement, strengthen community support, and address societal gaps to improve mental health outcomes and create a supportive environment for elderly populations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Firms’ real and reporting response to taxation: A discussion

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2025-10-11

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Labor Consequences of R&D Tax Capitalization

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax: A Congressional Folly

  National Tax Journal · 2024-05-15 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We revisit work that investigates the firms that are likely subject to the corporate alternative minimum tax (CAMT) using publicly available financial statements. Consistent with prior work, we find that the group of firms seemingly subject to the CAMT is small and includes some surprises. Furthermore, like the pre-Inflation Reduction Act alternative minimum tax, we estimate that the CAMT will raise far less revenue than projected. Finally, we find that most firms say very little regarding their potential CAMT liabilities, consistent with their anticipated tax liabilities being relatively small.

  PublisherDOI

• 2021 Excellence in Refereeing

  Journal of Accounting Research · 2022 · 1 citations

  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Accounting
  DOI

• Corporate tax cuts, merger activity, and shareholder wealth

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2020 · 53 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Monetary economics
  • Business
  • Economics
  PublisherDOI

• A FESTSCHRIFT IN HONOR OF HARRY GRUBERT

  National Tax Journal · 2019-02-07 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Harry Grubert’s influence on tax accounting research began by calling attention to the finer details of repatriation techniques and foreign tax credits, and evolved over time into the complexities of multinational firms’ tax minimization strategies, ownership structures, and income-shifting behavior. The depth of knowledge he created will continue to shape our research as we revisit his studies to find questions and answers in the wake of major corporate tax reform.

  PublisherDOI

• Summary: Effects of the US Worldwide Tax Regime on Domestic Investment

  ScholarlyCommons (University of Pennsylvania) · 2019-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  There are two basic systems for international corporate taxation. The US operates under a worldwide taxation system, in which the US government asserts its right to tax the global income of US resident corporations, whether that income is earned within the US or outside it. The US is the only G7 nation that maintains such a tax system. The majority of other nations in the world use a territorial taxation regime. A territorial regime embodies a source-based system where countries only tax business activity that happens within their borders. This summary of Professor Jennifer Blouin's B-School Seminar, focuses on differences in corporate tax regimes worldwide and the implications for corporate tax reform.

  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Douglas A. Shackelford

  32 shared

• Jana Smith Raedy

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  21 shared

• Leslie A. Robinson

  Dartmouth College

  17 shared

• Gaëtan Nicodème

  European Commission

  15 shared

• Luc Laeven

  Centre for Economic Policy Research

  13 shared

• Harry Huizinga

  Centre for Economic Policy Research

  12 shared

• Linda K. Krull

  9 shared

• David F. Larcker

  European Corporate Governance Institute

  8 shared

Awards & honors

• Penn Fellow, 2014-2015
• Jacob Levy Center Research Grant, 2014-2015
• MBA Excellence in Teaching Award, 2014
• Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Grant, 2010-20…
• MBA Teaching Commitment and Curricular Innovation Awards, 20…