Controversies over fair value accounting： The case of SMEs

This study analyses IASB＇s stipulations on fair value usage in its standard designed for SMEs and the reactions of national standard setters, preparers and users of financial reporting in this respect. It tries to clarify fair value applications such as market value and value in use and the appropriateness of their usage for the case on hand. This research determines the inconsistencies within IASB ED IFRSfor SMEs （2007） related to the usage of fair value, underlined by the respondents＇ comment letters. The content analysis of all the above, conducted according to the type of economy and nature of respondent, along with the statistical techniques applied, indicates a partial approval of fair value usage under the following conditions： clarification of the concept, details on its usage in relation to market liquidity and the nature of the asset, additional guidance regarding the measurement methods. We advocate for the value in use, an application of the fair value based on internal valuations, which offers an adequate cost-benefit rate. The final version ofIFRSfor SMEs highlights both the preference of market information over the internal valuations and the insufficient information regarding solutions suited for non-liquid markets. It may be appropriate for the IASB, maybe in collaboration with the IVSC, to provide guidance and details regarding the implementation and disclosure of the valuation techniques applicable to this type of entities.     

The defects of fair value under global financial crisis

With the advent of the economic crisis, fair value once again becomes a hot topic. This paper discusses the issues of fair value from three aspects including the meaning of fair value, its serious impacts and its inapplicability in China. As for this point, this paper stress that the rub of the fair value is its inaccurate recognition elements which will inevitably lead to the inaccurate measurement. Finally, the paper puts forward the viewpoint that China should be careful enough to apply the fair value accounting.     

Corporate governance mechanisms and firm valuation in Malaysian listed firms： A panel data analysis

Corporate governance mechanisms emerge to tackle agency problems in ensuring that shareholders＇ funds are not expropriated or wasted on unprofitable activities. The issue arises as to whether these improvements have been effective in reducing agency costs, and therefore enhancing firm value. The objectives of this paper is to examine the effects of governance mechanisms of dividend, types of ownership structure, and board governance on firm value. This paper utilises a panel data analysis of 403 firms listed on the Bursa Malaysia over a four-year period from years 2002 to 2005. A hierarchical regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses and the data is analysed using the generalized least square （GLS） estimation technique. Overall, the results highlight the importance of moderating role played by board governance variables with types of ownership structure to influence firm value. However, the benefits of better corporate governance through enhanced board governance are not the same across all firms since their incentives vary with respect to dividend and different types of ownership structure mechanisms.     

Research on the area which accounting calculated

Currently, accounting practices is restrained by the concept that financial accounting is based on the transaction. It excludes some important resources, like internal generated goodwill, from the accounting calculation system. So it fails to fully reflect the enterprise resource and their operating effects. Based on the analysis on recent demand and supply of accounting information, this paper proposes the view that financial accounting should be based on the value. In the authors＇ opinion, both the internal generated goodwill and the purchased goodwill have the same essence. They should be brought into the accounting system. Accounting should put the enterprise resource as its object, and the area of calculation should include enterprise resource＇s origin and composition of valuation, such as liabilities, equity and the remained of the rights, profit and comprehensive income and so on. Accounting should provide the information about the value and comprehensive income of the enterprise.     

Does a deviation between the rights and obligations of the board and controlling shareholders affect firm value？

This study examines the association between firm value and ownership structure, when board and controlling stockholders＇ voting rights deviate from obligations. The measurement of the corporate governance variables is different from prior research. The author further investigates whether monitoring mechanisms can alleviate the agency problem due to percentage of outside directors. The empirical results show that the higher board voting rights-obligations is deviated, which means the weaker relation with the firm value. The author also finds the monitoring from outside directors can reduce the agency problems from board＇s deviation and thus can improve firm value. But the results of the controlling stockholders＇ deviation are mixed or insignificant. This research has implications for Taiwan＇s regulators who are striving to improve the information, transparency, and corporate governance of board and controlling shareholders＇ voting rights-obligations deviation.     

An empirical study on information content of accounting earnings and cash flow

Based on deep analyzing the colluding and checking relation of income statement and cash flow statement, this paper chooses and designs the corresponding profit index, carries on the comparative study of information content between accounting earnings and cash flows. The paper utilizes the financial data of Chinese listed company in manufacturing industry from 2003 to 2005, adopts the price model and analyzes empirical study about two kinds of profit indexes and value relevance. Studies have suggested： accounting earnings and cash flows all have relevant relations to stock prices; however, the relevance between cash flow and stock price is stronger, and cash flows have higher information quality.     

Dependencies between price duration,volatility, volume and return on the Warsaw Stock Exchange

The successive changes of asset prices are the most visible manifestation of financial markets dynamics. There exist different views about factors generating these changes, but many researchers and practitioners agree that the most important among them is the impact of information flow. According to the market microstructure theories, it depends mainly on the behavior of informed and uniformed traders. In the paper, we investigate dependencies between the possible proxies of information process： price duration and corresponding to it volume change and return. Our main objective is to answer the question about the most important factor in the process of discovering information by uniformed traders. We apply a set of models for volatility, volume and duration data. Our analysis is performed for selected equities listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and uses tick-by-tick data. The obtained results show that the stock liquidity on this leading stock market in Central and Eastern Europe is the most important factor influencing the process of discovering information by uninformed traders.     

The accounting valuation of bank stocks in Europe

In this study we examine the validity of the earnings-book value capitalization model in the pricing of bank stocks in Europe. We perform cross-sectional tests using a sample of banks operating in 21 European Union countries. We split our sample into code and common law countries to control for the influence of the financial reporting system upon the pricing of earnings and book value. Our empirical findings suggest that disaggregating total reported clean surplus income into reported gains and losses from securities and other income increases the explanatory power of the accounting valuation model. Indeed, reported gains and losses from securities are priced lower than other income, irrespective of whether the financial reporting system is classified as a code or a common law system, probably because the market considers the former as a less stable source of income. Additionally, we observe that the pricing of both earnings and book value is influenced by the financial reporting system. We conclude that earnings announced under a common law financial reporting system are priced differently from those reported under the respective code law system. Finally, we provide evidence that comprehensive and dirty surplus income are two value relevant variables for banks reporting earnings under the code law system, although dirty surplus income is priced lower than clean surplus income.     

The market reaction on the human resources information disclosure in Chinese listed companies

In this paper, the author uses the listed company＇s annual report and financial statements to do the empirical research, the selected areas are information technology industries. The results show that the average age of employees, professional proportion, and the average assesses and executives＇ shareholdings have no significant impact with P/B. The industry statistics revealed no significant impact between average age and P/B because each group of age has its own advantages. By using these indicators, the author can improve the human resources information voluntary disclosure, make the disclosure of information comparable, and provide the empirical reference to the listed companies.     

Control and its role in the process of ensuring knowledge continuity

With the commencement of the 21st century, the information age, knowledge economy and integration of information and knowledge among production factors, organizations show increasing interest in knowledge management. Managers are trying not only to preserve knowledge and transfer it efficiently within their organization, but also to ensure that it is not lost when a knowledge employee leaves the organization. Therefore, it is indispensable for organizations to monitor, record, transfer and preserve their knowledge. In order to ensure efficient preservation of knowledge by the organization, it is essential to integrate the area of the so-called knowledge continuity into the general management and ensure its maximum value. The goal of the article is to identify the role of control in the transformation process and its impact on ensuring knowledge continuity within the organization. A partial goal lies in identifying output quality control by means of productivity One of the conclusions of the article is that in today＇s economic situation, ignoring the existence of knowledge continuity could result in a crisis of management of knowledge and its loss.     

The analysis of determinants of going concern audit report

Going concern is one of essential things for user to make a financial decision. This research aims to explore factors that caused the issuance of going concern audit report by auditor. This research adds two new variables, audit size and audit committee, besides the other factors that cause auditor issue a going concern audit report. This research uses a regression logistic analysis to determine the relationship of each variable （liquidity, solvability, profitability, cash flow, audit firm size and audit committee） to going concern audit report. Different from previous researches, the results of this research show that liquidity, profitability, cash flow, and audit committee are not significant to influence the issuance of audit opinion. Audit size has a more significant relationship to audit opinion, while solvability is the most significant factor.     

The determinants of shareholders＇ wealth of acquiring firms in India

Corporate restructuring has become a major component in the financial and economic environment all over the world. Industrial restructuring has raised important issues for business decisions as well as for public policy formulation. Since 1991, Indian industries have been increasingly exposed to both domestic and international competition and competitiveness. The companies started restructuring there operations around their core business there M ＆ A. But M ＆ A is an area of potential good and harm in corporate strategy including manufacturing industry. Therefore, an attempt has been made to analyze the security returns and to find out the net wealth increase or decrease to the shareholders of acquiring firms. In India, there are totally 58 manufacturing companies which have undergone mergers and acquisitions during 2000, 2001 ＆ 2002. Thirty percentage from the total population was taken as sample size （i.e., 17 companies out of 58）. The present study is mainly based on secondary data. The Market Model and Market Adjusted Returns Model analysis are used as tools of analysis.     

Are Islamic incomes relevance to commercial banks in Malaysia？

A significant price-to-earnings relation is evident in many research findings, which includes study on Malaysia Stock Markets, that the strength, consistency and magnitude of the relation are not as large as those reported in institutionally more developed markets. However, the price adjustment is stronger if price reaction is measured over a long periods, which is consistent to speculative trading. Firm-specific variables such as revenue, firm size and debt-equity have no incremental information content beyond earnings implies that the market monitoring process in an emerging market focuses on earnings only during financial announcement. Therefore, this paper revisited the study on the relevant of accounting banks in Malaysia using the earnings response coefficients, earnings by looking at Islamic Income for commercial which are the earnings-to-share return coefficients that are estimated for sub earnings components by including Islamic banking incomes in the analysis. This paper discovered that though there is a positive effect, the earnings from Islamic banking operation are small. Thus, the total earnings as well as the sub-categories of earnings of banks appear to enter the pricing considerations of investors.     

Role of supply chain management in target costing

Standard costing is used as a control for product costing. But with life cycle becoming shorter, costing should be done at the design and development stage of a product. This is achieved through target costing.The implementation of target costing and target pricing is done with the ultimate purpose of cost reduction, cost understanding, continuous improvement, competitiveness, early purchasing and supplier involvement, and improved design and accountability by manufacturers. The study explores the participation of the purchasing and supply chain management＇s role in target costing and target pricing process. Supply management plays an active role in monitoring the ongoing cost and performance of suppliers during the early stages of product development. Implementation of target costing and target pricing in various organizations are also explored. Leading Japanese manufacturers have used target costing and target pricing systems to their advantage and the paper also examines the adaptation of the Western companies to these proactive cost management techniques to improve their product development processes.     

Malmquist indices of productivity growth for Islamic and conventional banks in Malaysia

This paper studies the total factor productivity （TFP） of banks in Malaysia with the emphasis on comparing the relative productivities of Islamic and Conventional banks. The Malmquist index approach is used to decompose productivity growth into technical efficiency and technological change. The productivity growth is measured and decomposed into technical change and efficiency change. The efficiency change is further decomposed into pure efficiency change and scale efficiency. It is found that Islamic banks＇ productivity growth is limited by its lack of technological change compared to its conventional counterparts. Nonetheless, both types of banks are operating at the correct level in terms of scale or size.     

From risk society to audit society

Contrary to what is sometimes claimed, the 2008 banking crisis occurred in an ultra-regulated environment. Legislative and regulatory financial-security regimes have in fact multiplied in recent years. The economic crisis is accelerating the transition of the risk society towards the audit society. But the G20 （Group of Twenty） declarations in Washington and London also reveal a managerial utopia： the march towards a society of confidence or harmony that would make controls superfluous. In this context, the article seeks to call upon philosophical, sociological and managerial references to risk, from Foucault to Power by way of Beck, Giddens ＆ Ewald, to shed light on the official declarations of the leaders of the world＇s main economies. The documentary corpus examined includes all the G20 works published between November 8, 2008 （preparation for the Washington Summit） and April 2, 2009 （conclusions of the London Summit）. The political philosophy underlying the G20＇s works remains fundamentally liberal, even though saving the worldwide market economy involves established security systems as well as self-control and control of others. In the end, the leaders do not decide between reinforcing the existing tools and inventing new systems. The updating of security technologies is meant to serve the preservation of the capitalist managerial utopia. This gives rise to a new variant of Beck＇s risk-society paradigm, too often confined to environmental threats alone, in three phases： （1） The crisis is a consequence of financial modernity and in particular of the inefficiency of regulation in the face of growing sophistication in techniques; （2） To restore confidence, the states and international institutions want, paradoxically, both to reinforce regulation and promote flexibility; （3） Thereupon, flexi-security controlled by worldwide economic governance characterizes the second financial modernity.     

Accounting regulation and IPSAS implementation： Efforts of transition countries toward IPSAS compliance

The need for high quality standards to enhance sound and consistent financial reporting and the fact that the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of public sector extended to a belief that public and private sectors did not have to be managed in fundamentally different ways, fostered a wide-ranging discussion about the harmonization of public sector accounting systems and their convergence towards the private sector financial reporting standards. This paper discusses the state and perspective of public sector accounting and financial reporting in transition countries. Precisely, this paper aims to examine the adequacy of governmental accounting and financial reporting model, reflecting the existing accounting regulation and financial reporting framework in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The motivation for this paper emerges from international discussions about IPSASs development and adoption, and the fact that the topic is becoming more and more relevant as many countries are moving towards adopting full accrual accounting using IPSASs as their method of financial reporting. Our results show that the degree and dynamics of government accounting systems＇ transformation in transition countries depends upon several specific factors which have to be taken into account when evaluating the systems and making comparison between government accounting system reforms in countries in the analysis. Thus, the study distinguishes certain similarities but also discrepancies regarding the status and possible further development of governmental accounting in countries examined.     

A system dynamics model for the assessment of the effects of advertising and sales promotion on profitability

Advertising and sales promotion have significant impact on raising customer awareness. They are tools by which customers become acquainted with new and innovative products and services of the companies. Despite the importance of these tools in increasing sales, it is not easy to evaluate their effect on sales. One of the problems confronted by the marketing managers is the determination of a clear relationship between the effectiveness of advertising and sales promotion on profitability. In this article, considering the relationship between these tools and brand equity, we have attempted to determine the relationship between effectiveness of these two factors and profitability. Next, a system dynamics model for representing the effects of marketing communication tools on company profitability is offered. Finally, using the data from a corporation and the numeric values related to each of the elements in the model, an attempt has been made to determine a number representing the magnitude of the effect of advertising and sales promotion on the corporation＇s revenue and profitability and to draw the respective curves related to the effects of these two factors.     

Determinants of market price of stock： A study on bank leasing and insurance companies of Bangladesh

Financial firms make up a substantial fraction of the domestic equity market. A number of studies subsequently used different conceptual and methodological approaches to model equity return of financial services firms. Movement of the stock price as the consequence of the movement of the micro and macroeconomic factors is strongly supported by the literature review. Dhaka Stock Exchange in Bangladesh is inefficient in weak form. Multiple regression analysis is conducted to find out the relationship microeconomic factors with the stock price. In this study found a significant linear relationship among market return and some microeconomic factors such as net asset value per share, dividend percentage, earning per share of bank leasing and insurance companies. Also found non-linear relationship among the variables is insignificant at 95 percent level of significance.     

Symbols In Hills like White Elephants

The purpose of this paper is to study the function of symbolization in short story by analyzing the symbols in Ernest Hemingway＇s work： Hills like White Elephants.