On the ‘Disclosure Initiative – Principles of Disclosure’: The EAA Financial Reporting Standards Committee’s View

Abstract

This paper summarises the contents of a comment letter produced by a working group of 12 academics in response to the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) Discussion Paper on principles of disclosure. The comment letter was submitted by the Financial Reporting Standards Committee (FRSC) of the European Accounting Association (EAA). The work includes reviews of relevant academic literature of areas related to the various questions posed by the IASB in the Discussion Paper, including the ‘disclosure problem’ and the objective of the project, the suggested principles of effective communication, the roles of the primary financial statements and notes, the location of information and the use of performance measures. The paper also discusses the disclosure of accounting policies, the objectives of centralised disclosure, and the New Zealand Accounting Standards Board staff’s approach to disclosure.     

Impact of Low‐Skilled Immigration on Female Labour Supply

In this paper, segmenting the market by educational levels, we investigate which native‐born women are more affected by an increase of low‐skilled immigrants working in the household service sector. We present a model of individual choice with home production and, using a harmonized dataset (the Cross‐National Equivalent File), we estimate its main comparative static results. The results suggest that the share of immigrants working in services is positively associated with an increase of native‐born women's labour supply at the intensive margin, if skilled, and at the extensive margin, if unskilled. Moreover, the results show that these effects are larger in countries with less‐supportive family policies.     

Designing flexible work practices for job satisfaction: the relation between job characteristics and work disaggregation in different types of work arrangements

The literature on flexible work practices has not yet evaluated in detail how the characteristics of a job affect job satisfaction. This study makes a distinction between two types of flexible work practices according to their aims: the accommodation of employees’ personal lives (employment practice) and the operational reasons of a firm (work practice). Based on this distinction, we studied how the characteristics of a job, which reflect the use of ICT to support the spatial disaggregation of business processes, influence the relationship between the two types of flexible work practices and job satisfaction. We show, through a survey conducted on 987 workers, that the characteristics of a job that favour work disaggregation positively moderate the influence of flexible work as a work practice on job satisfaction, but they do not moderate the influence of flexible work as an employment practice. The implications for managers, workers and scholars are discussed.     

The role of unaffiliated bankers on conditional conservatism: Evidence from IFRS information shock

We exploit IFRS mandatory adoption as a source of variation in the demand for conditional conservatism to examine the role of unaffiliated bankers on the level of conditional conservatism. We show that firms with unaffiliated bankers on boards of directors experience a significant increase in the level of conditional conservatism compared with firms without unaffiliated bankers on boards. These findings hold after we account for other country‐level factors that shape the demand for conditional conservatism. Additional analyses show that the role of unaffiliated bankers on conditional conservatism depends also on firm‐specific incentives arising from the contracting environment. Taken together, our findings provide new insights into the role of corporate governance arrangements on financial reporting outcomes.     

Price Caps and Output Floors: A Comparison of Simple Regulatory Rules

We study in this paper a simple alternative to price cap regulation. The mechanism, which we label 'output floor' regulation, requires the regulated firm to supply a given level of output. This rule is as simple as price cap regulation, and performs identically when the regulated firm is a natural monopoly; however, we show that, in the presence of a competitive fringe, output floor regulation yields lower prices and stronger incentives for cost reduction. Its introduction, however, is likely to be resisted by the industry, since it lowers managerial utility and shareholders' profits.     

Sulla stima della media e del secondo momento di una popolazione tramite campioni con risposta casualizzata

Il campionamento con risposta casualizzata, introdotto da S. L. Warner per la stima di proporzioni ed in seguito applicato dallo stesso autore e da altri alla stima di quantità, è stato oggetto di un recente studio di D. Olivieri che, proposto un semplice metodo di casualizzazione, perviene ad una stima non distorta della media della popolazione oggetto d'indagine.Nel presente lavoro si sviluppa lo studio di Olivieri fornendo una stima non distorta del secondo momento della popolazione e si propone un'altra stima della media e della varianza della popolazione ottenuta tramite un metodo di casualizzazione di più semplice applicazione.

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The randomized response technique of sampling was proposed for the first time by S. L. Warner for the estimation of proportions and then applied, by Warner himself and other authors, to the estimation of quantities.This technique has been recently the object of an approach by D. Olivieri who suggests an easy randomization method and obtains an unbiased estimate of the population mean.In this paper the approach of D. Olivieri is implemented, reaching an unbiased estimate of the second moment of the population; moreover, an other estimate of the mean and of the variance of the population, obtained by an easier-to apply method of randomization, is proposed.

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Versione definitiva pervenuta il 12-1-81     

HOUSEHOLDS' NON-SNA PRODUCTION: LABOUR TIME, VALUE OF LABOUR AND OF PRODUCT, AND CONTRIBUTION TO EXTENDED PRIVATE CONSUMPTION

This paper first shows, with data from fourteen countries, the potential of time-use studies for measuring, in comparable physical quantities, labour inputs in SNA and in non-SNA production. It then presents the monetary valuations of unpaid household labour and of households' non-market product achieved on the basis of time-use data in a few of these countries. Further elaboration of these valuations illustrates the contribution of households' non-SNA production to extended private consumption. The conclusion suggests desirable future developments.     

Intangible assets as drivers of innovation: Empirical evidence on multinational enterprises in German and UK regional systems of innovation

The sources of value creation are increasingly relying on intangible assets (IAs). IAs are the lifeblood of knowledge-intensive industries where the new value added is disproportionally based on specialized, non-repetitious activities. However, while the role of IAs is recognised as central to sustain the competitiveness of firms and innovation systems, the understanding of the mechanisms through which IAs display their effects has not yet been fully grasped.By focussing on the processes through which investments in IAs occur, this paper aims to explore the key dimensions through which two specific IAs - organisational and network capital - are enhanced and contribute to the innovativeness and embeddedness of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) in regional innovation systems. On the basis of over forty in-depth interviews to leading staff of German and UK flagship MNEs operating in the automotive, life science and ICT sectors, the paper shows that MNEs adopt rather distinctive strategies to develop IAs; that MNE degree of local embeddedness is strictly related to both the kind of IA strategy and the local environment; and that causation mechanisms are at work between MNE embeddedness and regional creation of IAs.     

Can unbiased be tighter? Assessment of methods to reduce the bias-variance trade-off in WTP estimation

This paper aims at verifying the claim, appeared in recent literature, that it is possible to control for response bias associated to the double bound elicitation method, while keeping gains in efficiency of the WTP estimates. Results from a Monte Carlo analysis lead, in general, to reject the claim; but when initial bids are not correctly chosen, the gains in efficiency are confirmed. An empirical application dealing with WTP estimation for drinking water quality improvements illustrates a case where a flexible modeling approach based on Copula distributions allows relevant gains with respect to the Single Bound estimator.