流行的谬误：会计诚信的认识误区

会计诚信危机已成为大众耳熟能详的话题，但人们对此仍存在诸多认识上的误区。本文对几种流行的谬误如“会计诚信危机是由会计人员道德低下造成的”、“会计诚信是会计人员的诚信”、“资本市场不发达是酿就会计诚信危机的环境驱动”、“会计诚信危机只是一种暂时的秩序混乱”作出——驳斥。     

浅析会计诚信

市场经济是诚信经济，会计业更应是诚信行业。目前会计行业面临严重的“诚信危机”，如何恢复并发展已有的诚信，重塑会计行业的诚信，是我们面临着的紧迫而艰巨的任务。     

会计诚信的思考

近几年中外会计信息严重失真的现实，使得会计诚信危机成为大众耳热能详的话题，但人们对此存在诸多认识上的误区。事实上，会计诚信危机是因为会计陷入了“囚徒困境”，而市场经济发展的不充分，垄断现象的存在，则导致了会计诚信原则的实现具有很大的相对性。解决问题的可行方法是让单位领导人成为会计法律责任的第一责任人，这样才有望真正确立会计的诚信原则。     

提高我国会计诚信水平的措施与途径

会计诚信是市场经济的要求。近年来会计诚信问题成了社会热点,各界议论纷纷,“会计信息失真”、“会计假账泛滥”、“会计道德失范”等字眼充斥报章杂志,会计诚信问题成了媒体关注的焦点。会计诚信缺失增加了交易成本,加大了企业生存的隐形危机,降低了经济运行效率。会计诚信问题受到了全社会的关注。     

论会计诚信

近些年来，会计诚信问题被全社会所关注。特别是在银广夏、卖科特、ST黎明等一系列上市公司会计造假案件被曝光后，像一枚枚重磅炸弹炸开：前年年底美国发生的“安然事件”，以及近年来的世界通信公司、施乐公司的造假案，则引发了一场严重的国际性会计危机，会计的信誉受到了严重损害。面对严重的会计诚信危机，正确理解会计诚信、不诚信的会计信息形成的原因，不诚信的会计信息的危害以及如何重塑会计诚信是我们面临的重要课题。     

浅析会计诚信缺失原因及解决对策

会计诚信是会计与生俱来的品质，是会计行业赖以生存的基础。而由于经济利益的驱动、会计信息不对称及违规成本低廉等原因，以及近几年来中外会计信息严重失真的情况屡屡发生。使会计行业面临“诚信危机”的挑战。因此针对当前会计诚信缺失的现状，分析会计诚信缺失的内在及外在原因，重点从会计行业的角度出发，提出减少会计诚信缺失的基本对策。     

国有企业会计诚信危机的实证研究

该文针对会计诚信的现状,通过对会计诚信危机的成因进行调查分析,认为会计人员实施舞弊并非出于其本意,“治”好单位负责人才是治理国有企业会计诚信危机的当务之急。作者从改变政府职能、完善国有企业法人治理结构、建立完善的监控与惩戒机制等三方面提出了治理会计诚信危机的对策。     

论会计诚信

近些年来，会计诚信问题被全社会所关注。特别是在银广夏、卖科特、ST黎明等一系列上市公司会计造假案件被曝光后．像一枚枚重磅炸弹炸开；前年年底美国发生的“安然事件”．以及近年来的世界通信公司、施乐公司的造假案，则引发了一场严重的国际性会计危机，会计的信誉受到了严重损害。面对严重的会计诚信危机．正确理解会计诚信、不诚信的会计信息形成的原因、不诚信的会计信息的危害以及如何重塑会计诚信是我们面临的重要课题。     

强化会计诚信建设 促进信息质量提高

本文主要介绍了会计诚信的概念、我国会计诚信危机产生的原因分析以及加强会计诚信，提高信息质量的措施。     

会计诚信危机的经济根源及其治理机制构建研究

会计诚信危机作为一种经济现象．也遵循供求规律，信息不对称的客观存在是其产生的经济根源，法律等外在制度约束和道德等内在制度约束的缺失度不健全，使经营者道德风险和逆向选择变为现实。建立套计诚信的制度规范，优化会计诚信环境，是治理诚信危机的根本措施。     

Pleasure and belief in Hume's Decision Process

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to introduce explicitly pleasure and belief in what aims at being a Humean theory of decision, like the one developed in Diaye and Lapidus (2005a). Although we support the idea that Hume was in some way a hedonist – evidently different from Bentham's or Jevons' way – we lay emphasis less on continuity than on the specific kind of hedonism encountered in Hume's writings (chiefly the Treatise, the second Enquiry, the Dissertation, or some of his Essays). Such hedonism clearly contrasts to its standard modern inheritance, expressed by the relation between preferences and utility.

The reason for such a difference with the usual approach lies in the mental process that Hume puts to the fore in order to explain the way pleasure determines desires and volition. Whereas pleasure is primarily, in Hume's words, an impression of sensation, it takes place in the birth of passions as reflecting an idea of pleasure, whose “force and vivacity” is precisely a “belief”, transferred to the direct passions of desire or volition that come immediately before action. As a result, from a Humean point of view, “belief” deals with decision under risk or uncertainty, as well as with intertemporal decision and indiscrimination problems.

The latter are explored within a formal framework, and it is shown that the relation of pleasure is transformed by belief into a non-empty class of relations of desire, among which at least one is a preorder.     

Globalization,Neoliberalism and the attack on social security

Neoliberal political movements advocate privatization of public pension systems. Globalization imposes pressure on nations to conform to neoliberal policy views with respect to the design and structure of social insurance, including public pension systems. The paper begins with an investigation of the economic, ethical and ideological dimensions of the privatization debates in the U.S.; it argues that privatization advocates may be largely moved by ideology, since the other reasons advanced appear weak or unfounded. The second part discusses the history of Social Security, the purposes for its creation, and some of its economic effects. Differences between public and private pension systems are considered. A brief international comparison of some aspects of public pension system finance and benefit structures is presented. The final section considers the ethical, macroeconomic and distributional implications of privatization, prefunding and payroll tax funding, and argues for a pay as you go system financed with income taxes. In order to promote equity, economic security, community, and social cohesion, public pension systems should be universal in coverage. In order to reduce the inequality, income insecurity, and aged poverty generated by market economies, public pension systems ought to be progressive: benefit/contribution ratios should be inversely proportional to income, and progressive income taxes should finance the system. To promote economic growth, the systems should be financed on a pay-as-you-go basis, and should not be prefunded except for an emergency reserve. The fiscal policy recommendations partially depend upon the theory developed by Abba Lerner in the 1940s, and recently advanced by Wynne Godley and Randy Wray: Lerner's “principle of functional finance.”     

Interest on reserves and inflation

The payment of interest on reserves has been a common practice in inflationary economies. This policy may seem paradoxical since it involves returning part of the seigniorage, generated by the inflation process, with the intention to finance the fiscal deficit. This paper argues that the motivation for this policy can be captured by the discretionary regime, where the policymaker pays interest on reserves because he is concerned with the erosion of real liquidity by inflation, which is in part beyond his control. However, this policy is an unlikely outcome in the commitment regime, where the policymaker is in full control of inflation.     

John Stuart Mill's Theories of Wealth and Income Distribution

Although he was much influenced by David Ricardo when he wrote the classical part of his Principles , John Stuart Mill was not a Ricardian when he penned his theories of wealth and distribution. They are based on a triple foundation. First, a belief that economics is a moral discipline. Second a theory of custom-driven human behavior. Third, an empirically formed conviction that the institutions of state, education and business cooperate to structure the distribution of income. On the basis of these presuppositions, Mill formulated 1) an institutional theory of the formation of human and non-human wealth and 2) an even more institutional theory of distribution demonstrating how the aforementioned institutions malignantly skew the distribution of income to the advantage of the propertied classes and to the extreme disadvantage of the working class. As a social economist, Mill recommended institutional reforms designed to eradicate the poverty of the working class.     

Neurally reconstructing expected utility

While the concept of “expected utility” informs many theories of decision making, little is known about whether and how the human brain might compute this quantity. This article reviews a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) experiments designed to localize brain regions that respond in anticipation of increasing amounts of monetary incentives. These studies collectively suggest that anticipation of increasing monetary gains activates a subcortical region of the ventral striatum in a magnitude-proportional manner. This ventral striatal activation is not evident during anticipation of losses. Actual gain outcomes instead activate a region of the mesial prefrontal cortex. During anticipation of gain, ventral striatal activation is accompanied by feelings characterized by increasing arousal and positive valence. These findings affirm the role of emotion in the anticipation of incentives, and may provide an initial step towards a neural reconstruction of expected utility.     

Duplication, Growth and ‘Total Return Economics’

Maintenance consumption is an expense recovered in product prices, yet also a source of taste satisfaction which must be exhausted, rather than reinvested, from the capital affording it. This riddle is solved in the duplication rules: the cost of maintenance consumption is recovered in pay and prices, but an equal flow is exhausted from the human capital of the worker earning the pay. The rules impact tradition in several ways. If output is defined in principle as value added, then it cannot also be described as consumption plus net investment without double-counting the maintenance consumption recovered in prices. Also rate of return in the stationary state is not zero, but is the rate sufficient to offset the exhaustion of individual human capital. The rules lead to new insights into economic return, and support an argument that all growth at the scale of closure is due to productivity gain rather than to thrift.     

Forecasting the price of gold

This article seeks to evaluate the appropriateness of a variety of existing forecasting techniques (17 methods) at providing accurate and statistically significant forecasts for gold price. We report the results from the nine most competitive techniques. Special consideration is given to the ability of these techniques to provide forecasts which outperforms the random walk (RW) as we noticed that certain multivariate models (which included prices of silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium, besides gold) were also unable to outperform the RW in this case. Interestingly, the results show that none of the forecasting techniques are able to outperform the RW at horizons of 1 and 9 steps ahead, and on average, the exponential smoothing model is seen providing the best forecasts in terms of the lowest root mean squared error over the 24-month forecasting horizons. Moreover, we find that the univariate models used in this article are able to outperform the Bayesian autoregression and Bayesian vector autoregressive models, with exponential smoothing reporting statistically significant results in comparison with the former models, and classical autoregressive and the vector autoregressive models in most cases.     

Simulating the Effect of Regulatory Systems in a Fishery, An Application to the French Driftnet Albacore Fleet

With a thin economic component, most bio-economic models of fisheries failto assess the effects of the regulation systems on firms. In order to analysethe short term consequences of different management schemes, a simulationmodel is applied to the French driftnet albacore fleet: licence allocation withdriftnet regulation, individual quotas, and individual transferable quotaswithout any input control. Vessel technology is estimated by using the datacollected, and groups of vessels are distinguished according to criteria ofperformance. We present the adjustment within firms and between groupsunder different scenarios (limited entry with and without driftnetregulation, individual quotas and individual transferable quotas allocation),and we compare their results in terms of quasi-rent value and otherindicators such as hake harvests or dolphin by-catches.     

Knowledge as a Path-Dependence Process

By following a new approach proposed by Cognitive and Neuroeconomics, this paper presents and extends that part of Hayek's theory concerning knowledge in path-dependent terms, and shows that this is a fertile theory, opening new lines of inquiry for contemporary economics. In his theory of knowledge Hayek shows that the dynamics of economic change is path-dependent, in a different and more profound way than in the rest of the path-dependent literature. This literature deals with an important controversy, which will be also discussed and its specific and original meaning will be highlighted. As it will emerge, knowledge as a path-dependent process is consistent with cognitive theories of perception and learning and it plays a more important role than is traditionally assumed. Path-dependence is in fact always present in the cognitive dimension of perception and in individual decision-making processes, as well as in the processes of organizational innovation, and even in the macro-dimension of institutional change. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.