Panos Patatoukas Wins American Accounting Association Best Paper Award

Panos Patatoukas has been awarded the 2009 Best Paper by a Doctoral Student Award of the American Accounting Association (AAA) Northeast Region for his paper "Customer-base concentration: Implications for firm performance and capital markets."

In the paper, Panos examines whether and how the concentration of a supplier firm’s customer base affects its performance and stock market valuation. To investigate this, he compiled a comprehensive sample of supply chain relationships over a thirty-year period and devised a measure that captures the extent to which a supplier’s customer base is concentrated. The conventional view is that large customers impede their suppliers’ profitability by pressuring them to provide concessions such as lower selling prices, favorable trade credit terms, and accelerated delivery times, however, Panos finds that suppliers with more concentrated customer bases benefit from cost efficiencies and enhanced asset utilization.

"Panos finds that supplier firms with fewer large customers are more profitable, and the stock market does not seem to adjust the price of such firms on a timely basis. This paper lies at the intersection of accounting and marketing research, indicative of his broad interest in these two subjects as well as in finance," said Professor Shyam Sunder, a past president of the AAA who, with Professor Jake Thomas, advises Panos in SOM’s doctoral program in accounting.

Panos presented the paper at the AAA Northeast Region Meeting held November 5-7, 2009 in Cambridge, MA.