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Regional hurricane risk is often assessed assuming a static housing inventory, yet a region's housing inventory changes continually. Failing to include changes in the built environment in hurricane risk modeling can substantially underestimate expected losses. This study uses publicly available data and a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network model to forecast the annual number of housing units for each of 1,000 individual counties in the southeastern United States over the next 20 years. When evaluated using testing data, the estimated number of housing units was almost always (97.3 % of the time), no more than one percentage point different than the observed number, predictive errors that are acceptable for most practical purposes. Comparisons suggest the LSTM outperforms ARIMA and simpler linear trend models. The housing unit projections can help facilitate a quantification of changes in future expected losses and other impacts caused by hurricanes. For example, this study finds that if a hurricane with similar characteristics as Hurricane Harvey were to impact southeast Texas in 20 years, the residential property and flood losses would be nearly US$4 billion (38 %) greater due to the expected increase of 1.3 million new housing units (41 %) in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The predictors of audit reporting lag in school districts in New York State are examined and the following results are observed: significant positive associations with audit lag and reportable internal control weaknesses, school districts not receiving an unqualified report, and districts disclosing a reportable condition with respect to the operation of a major Federal program; and significant negative associations between audit lag and districts reporting a material noncompliance and districts that change auditors. Results also reveal that Long Island school districts have a significantly longer audit lag. Using survey data collected from school districts on Long Island, the association between audit report lag and governance characteristics of boards of education and audit committees is also explored. Findings suggest that in the Long Island, NY market, measures of auditor continuity and board entrenchment (board of education tenure) are associated with longer audit lag. In addition, the findings suggest that auditor concentration (the number of school district audits performed by the auditor) contributes to the longer audit lag found in that market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine and provide evidence on the frequency, characteristics, and nature of code of ethic amendments filed by public companies. In addition, we propose a classification system that researchers can use to explore issues surrounding code of ethics amendments, waivers, and adoptions. Our study contributes to the growing stream of literature examining changes in business ethics in a global environment and the impact of regulation on firms' business practices. Finally, we provide background information on the provisions Section 406 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), an important, but less frequently discussed requirement of SOX. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]