Audit Education for Future Professionals: Perceptions of New Zealand Auditors

Audit professionals are charged with gathering evidence and expressing their opinions on the financial claims made by others. In New Zealand, as elsewhere, these opinions are relied upon for a myriad of decisions as to the economic position and operations of an organisation. The educational experience that future professionals receive in their tertiary study is important because it lays the pedagogical foundation for this role. The aim of this study is to evaluate those teaching practices, subjects and techniques that might be of value to future audit professionals. The analysis is uniquely from the perspective of the professional members who are most likely to benefit from students' experiences. The literature is used to identify relevant questions, and a survey of 360 professional auditors in New Zealand yielded a 36.4% response rate. A triangulated analysis of comments and scaled questions reveals that these professionals are concerned with communication, small business engagements and the relationships between, for example, risk and planning and independence and ethics. Findings also confirm the value of experiential and practice-informed learning and direct us to a few topics that may accommodate non-traditional teaching methods. Conclusions consider implications for teaching and future research.     

Import substitution and economic growth

Despite Latin America's dismal performance between the 1950s and 1980s, the region experienced strong capital deepening. We suggest that these facts can be explained as a consequence of the restrictive trade regime adopted at that time. Our framework is based on a dynamic Heckscher-Ohlin model, with scale economies in the capital-intensive sector. Initially, the economy is open and produces only the labor-intensive good. The trade regime is modeled as a move to a closed economy. The model produces results consistent with the Latin American experience. Specifically, a sufficiently small country experiences no long-run income growth, but an increase in capital.     

Monotonic Knowledge Models,Cycles, Linear Versions and Auctions with Differential,Finite Information

In games of incomplete information where each player's information is represented by a partition of the state space, this paper presents a characterisation of monotonic models in terms of connected partitions and another in terms of versions . A model is monotonic if and only if there is a linear version, and this is true if and only if there is a real‐valued function on the state space such that every partition of the model is connected with respect to this function. These results help us understand the strength of the connectedness assumption on common‐value, second‐price auctions with differential, finite information. We offer a simple sufficient condition for non‐monotonicity to check if models are monotonic.     

A quality approach to airport management

This paper discusses aspects of airport service quality evaluation using fuzzy multicriteria analysis and the alpha-cut concept. It presents a fuzzy multicriteria methodology for analysing a complex set of quality variables. This methodology develops a step by step set of indicators that allow managers have a holistic view of the quality dimension. It also helps the understanding of cause and effect relation, it helps tracking service quality problems and benchmarking them. From the alpha-cut concept, by defining upper and lower limits, this approach seeks to assist managers in evaluating a complex number of quality criteria and decision-makers’ behaviour. This approach gives managers a broader view of comparative perceptions of quality among the airports in a given sample, by presenting the results of the analysis in fuzzy form and allowing managers to consider different styles of evaluation. The methodology discussed is applied to six Brazilian international airports.     

Dietary intake and the contribution of snacks among adolescents during the summer months

Abstract Adolescent diets are often cited as nutritionally inadequate, possibly because of their reported snacking habits. This study examined 48 adolescent diets using a 24-h diet recall and a 2-day food record during summer months. Total intake and snacks identified by the subjects were analysed for energy and nutrient content. Male and female subjects reported similar intakes of fat, cholesterol and sugar. Ninety-eight per cent of subjects reported at least one snack daily. Snacks contributed 25% to the total energy, vitamin C, calcium and magnesium intakes. Although these subjects were not adhering to national recommendations for fat and sugar, the snacks they consumed contributed positively to the nutrient content of adolescent diets.     

An Analysis of FEE-HELP in the Vocational Education and Training Sector

The public vocational education and training (VET) system is one of the few areas in Australia's tertiary education system where students are required to pay upfront fees without access to loan assistance. These arrangements may lead to sub‐optimal educational outcomes to the extent that prospective students reject a VET education on the basis of short‐term financial constraints. In this paper we analyse some of the important issues related to the adoption of FEE‐HELP (a 2005 federal government financial instrument based on the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS)). It is argued that income contingent loans of this kind are associated with the advantages of both default‐protection and consumption smoothing. Using data from the first three waves of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we examine various empirical issues associated with the adoption of FEE‐HELP in VET, including the extent of private salary returns to VET qualifications. As well, we explore issues related to the public subsidies inherent in the adoption of FEE‐HELP in VET, and illustrate the time periods involved in loan repayments for various assumptions concerning the size of the charge and the future income of VET graduates. Administrative issues are considered, as are the implications for the Commonwealth government with respect to potential subsidies associated with the design parameters. In the 2007–08 Federal Budget, the former government announced a small extension of the FEE‐HELP system into Australian VET, a reform consistent with improved tertiary funding arrangements.     

The London Commercial Property Price Index

Of the top ten global commercial property markets, London’s has had the highest transaction turnover for the past decade according to Real Capital Analytics. Its prime real estate is part of every major European and US institutional investor’s portfolio and London’s market has the most developed commercial property derivatives market outside of the US. Yet, no transaction-based index exists for the London office market. The aim of this study is to fill that gap. Using a comprehensive dataset of transactions from Estates Gazette interactive and Real Capital Analytics, this paper analyzes different repeat-sales estimation strategies and noise filters to produce a quarterly index series from the first quarter of 1997 to the fourth quarter of 2011. In addition, the index series is measured against IPD’s London capital valuation series and the MIT Center for Real Estate New York office market repeat sales index series. Results show that the market turn of the first financial crisis is clearly visible in the transactions-based indices, and that this index leads the capital valuation series by about a year. London’s office market seems to have been affected by the crisis considerably earlier than New York’s market and correlations between the two markets are low.     

Evaluating the employability paradox: When does organizational investment in human capital pay off?

Abstract

The paper explores the notion of the employability paradox which notes that while organizations investing in the career and competency development of their workforce can benefit from higher performance, they also risk losing more employable staff to competitors. Building on contributions from social exchange theory and signalling theory, we develop a model exploring the circumstances under which investment in career development benefits employees and organizations. We test our model in a longitudinal study following graduates entering the labour market. Our results show that when organizations signal that they care about employees by investing in their career development and individuals are receptive to such signals and proactively seek to manage their careers, investment in career development has a positive impact on organizational commitment and intention to stay with one’s employer. Our findings indicate that the idea of the employability paradox is simplistic and lacks theoretical and empirical support.