Financial scandals: a historical overview

I examine the incidence of fraud from c.1720 to 2009 and relate it to the occurrence of significant financial scandals. Focusing on the UK, and US prior to Enron, and using a detailed dataset of significant events and news content, underpinned by examination of specific watershed scandals, the paper highlights the regulatory response to scandals and the implications for accounting and financial reporting. The evidence reveals the incidence of fraud and financial scandal to be historically contingent and skewed towards certain sectors, particularly banking and finance, facilitated by complex group structures and international capital mobility, and mediated by managerial incentives and ownership concentration. Financial reporting and auditing can mitigate fraud opportunities in all sectors and businesses without complex group structures, and the accounting profession achieved some success in this respect up to the mid-1970s. Since then, the profession has been increasingly challenged by, and to some degree implicated in, the development of interconnected and international business networks, which, combined with wider financial deregulation, has led to a resurgence of fraud and financial scandal not previously experienced since the mid-nineteenth century.     

Sustainability Northwest: An Integrative Case of a Not‐for‐Profit Organization

Sustainability Northwest (SNW) is a fictional not‐for‐profit organization (NPO) that seeks to develop thought leaders for a sustainable future. This instructional case allows professors to assign students with up to six different roles, including SNW's chair of the board, executive director, volunteer treasurer, and the external auditor. Unique learning objectives include (i) the application of the CPA Canada Handbook, Accounting—Part III to prepare an NPO's financial statements using fund accounting, (ii) the development of recommendations to improve an NPO's board of directors, (iii) the analysis of system flow documents to identify control weaknesses, and (iv) the preparation of an audit planning memo. Instructors can use this case in several milieus. First, professors can foster a student's ability to integrate technical knowledge by (i) assigning students all six roles in a capstone course to promote integration within an individual course or (ii) assigning multiple roles across multiple courses to promote integration across a program of studies. Second, instructors can focus on a particular technical skill by assigning specific roles. This case is ideal for senior‐level undergraduate students or graduate students.     

Time,Arbitrage, and the Law of One Price: The Case for a Paradigm Shift

Consider a Competitive, Efficient, and Frictionless Economy (CEFE) where resources are scarce at any date, and hence money as a valid claim against scarce resources is also scarce. In this economy, there is always price competition, which can at any date generate an unlimited number of arbitrage opportunities. For example, at any date, opportunities can exist to buy and sell each one of the contracts for delivery of the same good or asset at multiple prices currently as well as on an infinite number of future dates. I prove all arbitrage transactions, including “spot” transactions, tie up arbitrageurs’ capital representing money, good or asset such that this capital cannot be used for any other purpose for a non-zero quantity of time. This makes it impossible to exploit all arbitrage opportunities with the scarce capital available at any date and leads to an infinite number of unexploited opportunities and a non-negligible opportunity cost of the capital tied-up in arbitrage transactions, represented by each arbitrageur’s best missed arbitrage opportunity, if no better opportunity exits, hence the breakdown of the law of one price in its standard sense. This helps construct a new paradigm of CEFE which resolves long-standing theoretical, empirical, and experimental puzzles.     

Accounting practice,fiscal decentralization and corruption

In prior studies, accounting and decentralization corruption solutions have so far been analysed in isolation. In this article, we connect these two strands of literature on corruption. Understanding this connection is important because weak financial accounting and reporting systems can inhibit monitoring incentives and thus reduce decentralization benefits in countering corruption. We argue that the effectiveness of decentralization as an anti-corruption barrier is complemented by the quality of the accounting practice in a country. Using multiple sources of data, we find that decentralization has a positive and increasing effect on reducing corruption among countries with a high-quality accounting practice. In contrast, decentralization has a negative and decreasing effect on reducing corruption among countries with weak-quality accounting practices. These findings are robust to alternative measures of accounting, decentralization and corruption and to endogeneity tests. Our findings demonstrate the crucial information role of accounting in enhancing decentralization monitoring mechanisms and in thereby reducing corruption.     

审计师地理距离对客户公司股价信息含量的影响

从地理经济学视角分析审计师的地理区位特征对上市公司股价信息含量的可能影响，利用2004—2013年中国A股上市公司的数据，实证检验了审计师与客户间的地理距离对客户公司股价信息含量的经验影响关系，并进一步考察了证券分析师与审计监督两种中介组织间的交互效应。研究发现：（1）审计师与客户公司间的地理距离越小，客户公司的股价信息含量越低，因为在中国当前经济社会背景下，地理邻近对审计师独立性的消极影响要强于其对审计师专业胜任能力的积极影响，这导致审计师审计质量降低，影响客户公司股价信息含量；（2）证券分析师对客户公司的关注程度越高，审计师的地理邻近性对客户公司股价信息含量的负面影响越弱，表明证券分析师与外部审计之间主要呈现一种相互替代的关系，证券分析师可以作为一种有效的补充监督机制。     

新会计准则下政府补助会计税务处理及其对研发加计扣除的影响

新会计准则完善了旧会计准则的不足,且对会计税务处理以及财务人员提出了更高要求。为了使企业在之后的发展过程中能更好地处理税务工作,分析新会计准则给企业经营带来的影响十分必要。基于此,文章分析了政府补助的内涵,以此为依据分析与之相关的会计核算和税务处理工作,并以当前的企业案例为依据,总结新会计准则下政府补助的会计税务处理对企业研发加计扣除产生的影响,进而为企业持续长远发展提供有参考价值的建议。     

Soldiers don't go mad: Shell shock and accounting intransigence in the British Army 1914-18

This research examines intransigence in accounting systems. Using historical research methods and archival sources, it explores intransigence in the Royal Army Medical Corps’ accounting systems in the context of the incidence of shell shock among British Army soldiers fighting at the battlefront during the First World War. The Army did not recognise shell shock as a medical condition and made few changes to its medical accounting systems for soldiers with shell shock. The four factors of system stability of the AGIL scheme (adaptation, goal attainment, integration, latency) are used to understand the limited medical accounting response to shell shock. This research indicates that in addition to historical and internal political reasons for intransigence, intransigence will occur unless a factor in the AGIL scheme is sufficiently impaired to make the accounting system unstable and force system change. This research finding has contemporary relevance, explaining accounting intransigence in response to issues of social concern.     

医院会计信息化背景下财务人员的内部培训研究

论文对当前会计信息化前景作用下,医院对其财务工作人员所实施的内部培训予以充分的研究,并对实施此项培训的原因进行了相应的探究,进而提出了针对性的相关措施,以提升医院内部培训的有效性,证明其所具有的合理性以及现实性意义。     

PPP项目财务管理与会计核算分析

随着我国经济进步与快速发展,PPP项目在社会发展中的作用越来越明显,对于PPP项目来说,其已经在水利、交通以及水利等项目的应用中取得了巨大的优势,而且其也是我国城市建设与城市经济发展中非常重要的项目工程。基于此,论文先介绍了PPP项目的形成与国家政策的支持,阐述PPP项目的具体概念,分析PPP项目对财务管理与会计核算的作用,提出完善PPP项目会计核算工作的相关建议以及PPP项目公司各个阶段的会计核算分析。     

Seasonality and regional productivity in the Spanish accommodation sector

This study quantifies the impact of peak demand and seasonality on regional productivity in the Spanish accommodation sector. We then identify factors affecting seasonal fluctuations and their relative contributions to regional variations in seasonality. The results show that demand for accommodation in the peak season mainly determines productivity. Thus, improving a region's attractiveness as a tourist destination is most effective for tourism-based regional development. In addition, reducing seasonal variations has a non-negligible impact on productivity. A decomposition analysis reveals that providing climate-independent tourist attractions and attracting business travelers are effective in reducing seasonality.