Cost accounting standard and cost accounting systems in Japan. Lessons from the past - recovering lost traditions

This paper aims to show two things. The first is how Japanese culture has contributed to the development of Japanese cost accounting history. The second is to reveal the research possibilities of cost accounting history. This paper also reviews the salient features of several important examples of these aspects of cost accounting practice in Japan. It therefore explores, through some practical illustrations, how and why Japanese cost accounting differs from that found in the West.     

Guidelines for Manuscripts Submitted to The China Journal of Accounting Research

【正】The China Journal of Accounting Research‘‘CJAR’’(ISSN 1755-3091)publishes quarterly.It contains peer-reviewed articles and commentaries on accounting,auditin...     

Shared Standard Setting in the Public Interest:A Strong Model

正The last two decades have been a definitive era in the evolution of the accountancy profession.In the wake of major corporate scandals at the turn of the century,an international public debate arose on the need for more effective and well-considered regulation;this debate then reignited during the global financial and sovereign debt crises.     

HOW TO PUT TOGETHER A COMPLETE PACKAGE

正Many Institute members know they cannot rely purely on technical knowledge and business acumen to remain competitive.As soft skills are increasingly important,Jemelyn Yadao finds out how CPAs can maintain     

Bayesian Risk Management for Equity-Linked Insurance

This paper describes how to apply Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques to a regime switching model of the stock price process to generate a sample from the joint posterior distribution of the parameters of the model. The MCMC output can be used to generate a sample from the predictive distribution of losses from equity linked contracts, assuming first an actuarial approach to risk management and secondly a financial economics approach. The predictive distribution is used to show the effect of parameter uncertainty on risk management calculations. We also explore model uncertainty by assuming a GARCH model in place of the regime switching model. The results indicate that the financial economics approach to risk management is substantially more robust to parameter uncertainty and model uncertainty than the actuarial approach.     

The historical significance of the revaluation of fixed assets in Japan's state-owned railway system, 1955-6

The Government Railways of Japan (GRJ) established a fixed assets accounting system on the accruals basis after the Second World War. The revaluation of tangible fixed assets was indispensable for GRJ's introduction of depreciation in 1948. GRJ scheduled the revaluation to secure a reasonable depreciation expense, because the company had applied the replacement method to all tangible fixed assets since its foundation in 1869. At the same time, GRJ assumed the balance of the revaluation reserve account to be a means of dealing with possible future accumulated losses.     

Effects of speculation and interest rates in a “carry trade” model of commodity prices

The paper presents and estimates a model of the prices of oil and other storable commodities, a model that can be characterized as reflecting the carry trade. It focuses on speculative factors, here defined as the trade-off between interest rates on the one hand and market participants' expectations of future price changes on the other hand. It goes beyond past research by bringing to bear new data sources: survey data to measure expectations of future changes in commodity prices and options data to measure perceptions of risk. Some evidence is found of a negative effect of interest rates on the demand for inventories and thereby on commodity prices and positive effects of expected future price gains on inventory demand and thereby on today's commodity prices.     

Optimal Dynamic Premium Control in Non-life Insurance. Maximizing Dividend Pay-outs

In this paper we consider the problem of finding optimal dynamic premium policies in non-life insurance. The reserve of a company is modeled using the classical Cramér-Lundberg model with premium rates calculated via the expected value principle. The company controls dynamically the relative safety loading with the possibility of gaining or loosing customers. It distributes dividends according to a 'barrier strategy' and the objective of the company is to find an optimal premium policy and dividend barrier maximizing the expected total, discounted pay-out of dividends. In the case of exponential claim size distributions optimal controls are found on closed form, while for general claim size distributions a numerical scheme for approximations of the optimal control is derived. Based on the idea of De Vylder going back to the 1970s, the paper also investigates the possibilities of approximating the optimal control in the general case by using the closed form solution of an approximating problem with exponential claim size distributions.     

'More a national asset than an investor's paradise': financial management and the British Motor Corporation, 1952-68

This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of financial management in the British motor industry in the 1950s and 1960s. We question whether US ownership automatically implied greater financial control and immunity from capital market pressures and discuss whether the problems BMC/BMH (British Motor Corporation/British Motor Holdings) experienced were symptomatic of the absence of financial imperatives among British management at this time. Finally we widen the agenda to place our findings on financial management into a wider literature dealing more generally with the problems of managerial control and corporate governance within the motor vehicle industry in the 1950s and 1960s.     

Religion and stock price crash risk:Evidence from China

This paper investigates whether religious traditions influence firm-specific crash risk in China.Using a sample of A-share listed firms from 2003 to 2013,we pro...