Jeff Hoopes has received the 2023 Bullard Faculty Research Impact Award which recognizes a professor whose research has had a significant impact on the practice of business. This award was created through the generosity of Clifford E. “Clif” Bullard Jr. (BSBA ’76), CEO of the Bullard Restaurant Group, and his wife Rachelle Bullard. Their goal was to inspire and provide incentives for faculty members to consider the impact on the business world as they choose research topics and communicate their results.
Jeff is the Research Director for the UNC Tax Center and an Associate Professor in the Accounting. A committee with representatives from both the academic and professional community found his work on the effects of public and private tax disclosures to show the kind of impact that this award was designed to honor.
In particular, Jeff has published two exemplary papers [1 & 2] demonstrating that tax disclosure is costly and perceived as a threat due to the potential for public backlash against the company. Jeff has also published more than a dozen other papers that touch on other tax policy-relevant themes.
Indicative of the broad practitioner interest in this research, Jeff is well-known among journalists and is frequently asked to opine on any number of tax-related subjects in the press. He has 100+ media citations in outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Forbes, CNN, NPR, Fortune, Washington Post, Time, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, and USA Today.
Jeff’s expertise has also led him to inform policymakers and the public in general. Jeff has testified in a congressional hearing [3], been asked to evaluated new tax policies by the IRS [4], commented to the SEC [5] and the FASB [6], advised the CBO [7], co-written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal with a Senator [8], published more than a dozen other op-eds, and has a podcast called Tax Chats [9], which has been downloaded tens of thousands of times.