Education/Professional Certification:

B.A., Economics, The George Washington University / M.S., Economics, University of Wisconsin – Madison / Ph.D., Economics, University of Wisconsin – Madison

Areas of Expertise:

Corporate tax policy

Biography:

Professor Plesko joined the University of Connecticut in 2005. Plesko’s research focuses on corporate tax policy, the interactions of the financial and tax reporting systems, and the behavior of loss firms. His research has appeared in The Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, the National Tax Journal, and the Journal of the American Taxation Association. Plesko was the 2007 recipient of the School of Business' Research Excellence Award and was the co-recipient of the 2005 American Accounting Association/Deloitte Wildman Medal. The Wildman Medal, which recognizes research "likely to make the most significant contribution to the advancement of the public practice of accountancy," cited research co-authored with Lillian Mills as providing the foundation for significant changes to corporations’ required reconciliation of their book-tax income differences. Plesko began his career as a financial economist at the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis during the development of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. He is a member of the Internal Revenue Service’s Advisory Council and the Statistics of Income Consulting Panel, and has been an advisor to tax reform projects for the states of Massachusetts and Maine. Plesko has testified or made presentations on corporate tax policy issues before the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, most recently on inventory and corporate tax disclosure issues. Professor Plesko has served on a number of committees of the American Accounting Association, the American Taxation Association, and the National Tax Association, including the AAA’s Competitive Manuscript Award Committee, the AAA Notable Contributions to Accounting Literature Award Screening Committee, the AAA/Deloitte Wildman Award Committee, and the AAA/Deloitte Robert M. Trueblood Seminar for Professors Committee, which he chaired in 2003. He is on the editorial boards of Accounting Horizons and the Journal of the American Taxation Association, and co-chaired the 2006 Annual Meeting of the National Tax Association. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the American Taxation Association, the National Tax Association, the American Tax Policy Institute, and the New England Economic Project. Prior to joining the University of Connecticut, Plesko was on the faculties of the MITSloan School of Management, where he received both school and institute-wide teaching awards, and Northeastern University. He has also taught at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and in the International Tax Program at the Harvard University Law School. Professor Plesko holds a B.A. in Economics from the George Washington University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He currently teaches ACCT323, Cost Analysis and Control, and ACCT327, Financial Statement Analysis and Business Valuation, in the MBA program.