Penn Professors on Writing in Accounting

Professor Jennifer Blouin

About the Professor

Professor Jennifer Blouin is an Associate Professor of Accounting and does research focusing on the role of taxation in firm decision making. For more information and links to Professor Blouin's writing, please visit her Wharton Faculty Page

Important Criteria for Student Writing

Prof. Blouin believes that the organization and reasoning of a student's argument are the most vital aspects of student writing. According to Prof. Blouin, part of presenting a persuasive argument is organizing papers in a manner that allows the reader to clearly follow the logical steps, progression, and explanation the writer is employing to solve the presented problem.

Prof. Blouin gives a good deal of partial credit and does not fault students for mistaken grammar in test taking settings.

Personal Writing Process

Prof. Blouin approaches writing with a process accounting scholars call the Kinney 3 paragraphs; three paragraphs that answer the questions, what are you doing, why are you doing it, and how are you going about it?

Prof. Blouin always tries to start with writing these three paragraphs, which essentially serve as the framework for the paper. The 'what' serves as the basis for the Introduction, the 'why' will be developed into the Background, the Lit Review, and the Hypothesis Development sections, and the how am I going about it is essentially the Research Design.

Once she has these three paragraphs written, Prof. Blouin typically tries to write the introduction, and then works off the other 2 paragraphs as an outline for the rest.

Favorite Author in the Field

One of Prof. Blouin's favorite writers in tax research is Mhir Desai, a finance professor at Harvard. In his writing, Prof. Blouin believes, Desai tells a brilliant story and really has a nice way of balancing the real with the research. He does a great job linking what industry would think with why we should think about it this way, with ultimately what the theory or the empirical analysis is doing. For example, in one paper, Desai actually likens the tax authorities to Russian Oligarchs and then links this story with the Tyco fraud. He writes in a manner that Prof. Blouin refers to as "sexing it up." It's an easy read and easy to get through.

What Prof. Blouin Writes

Prof. Blouin primarily engages in research writing. She occasionally does review pieces that summarize existing works, but she has not done any textbook writing.