The impact on stock prices of deferral and elimination of internal control audit requirement for small firms

This paper examines the cumulative market reaction to the events related to deferral of internal control audit requirement under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and its elimination under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 for nonaccelerated filers (small firms). We document that small firms experienced negative cumulative abnormal returns around these events; and the differences between the cumulative abnormal returns for small firms and the two control groups (accelerated and large accelerated filers) were negative and significant at the 1% level. These results support the notion that market participants value the reliability of financial information irrespective of the firm size. Within the small firms, we find no firm characteristic significantly explains the market reaction to the events considered. That is, all small firms lost market value in reaction to the events that delayed and eliminated their internal control audit requirement.     

Effect of credible quality investment with Bertrand and Cournot competition

We show how credible revelation and ability to commit to quality choice effect equilibrium qualities and welfare when product market is either Bertrand or Cournot competition. We show that results depend on the type of competition but not generally on the cost of quality function. We show that with Bertrand competition, the equilibrium qualities are lower with credible commitment. Competition is moderated and producer surplus is higher and consumer surplus lower. With Cournot competition, higher quality will be better but lower quality will be worse with credible commitment. Consumer surplus is always greater with credible commitment and if cost does not increase too quickly with quality, producer surplus will also increase. Thus credible commitment is a collusive device with Bertrand competition but it can improve social welfare with Cournot competition. Received: February 8, 2000; revised version: February 14, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" The idea of this paper originated in the weekly workshops of Mordecai Kurz at Stanford. I am forever in debted to Mordecai and fellow students – Luis Cabral, Peter DeMarzo, John Hillas, Michihiro Kandori, Steve Langois, Patrick McAllister, Steve Sharpe, Peter Streufert, Steve Turnbull and Gyu-Ho Wang – for their criticism and encouragement. I also benefited from comments from Yi-Heng Chen, Jin-Li Hu, Kala Krishna, Jinji Naoto, Thomas J. Prusa, and Shyh-Fang Ueng at various later stages of this work. Last but not least, I am grateful for the detailed comments of the referee.     

A critical appraisal of the reporting quality of published randomized controlled trials in the fall injuries

To evaluate the quality of reporting in published randomized controlled trials (RTCs) in the field of fall injuries. The 188 RTCs published between 2001 and 2011, indexed in EMBASE and Medline databases were extracted through searching by appropriate keywords and EMTree classification terms. The evaluation trustworthiness was assured through parallel evaluations of two experts in epidemiology and biostatistics. About 40%–75% of papers had problems in reporting random allocation method, allocation concealment, random allocation implementation, blinding and similarity among groups, intention to treat and balancing benefits and harms. Moreover, at least 10% of papers inappropriately/not reported the design, protocol violations, sample size justification, subgroup/adjusted analyses, presenting flow diagram, drop outs, recruitment time, baseline data, suitable effect size on outcome, ancillary analyses, limitations and generalizability. Considering the shortcomings found and due to the importance of the RCTs for fall injury prevention programmes, their reporting quality should be improved.     

The Challenge of Humanistic Economics

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) created the Hospital Compare Program in 2003 to increase transparency between healthcare providers and consumers. Implemented in 2005, this transparency consists of hospitals' collecting and making publicly available a set of hospital quality score measures. The CMS induced participation by financially penalizing hospitals that did not publicly report a specific subset of these measures (called “starter” measures). Three years into the program, the penalty for non-reporting both the starter measures and other (“non-starter”) measures was increased. I use a difference-in-differences methodology to analyze the effect of the increased CMS penalty on the likelihood that a hospital publicly reported its starter and non-starter measure scores. I find that the penalty had an economically and statistically insignificant effect on the probability that a hospital publicly reported its starter scores, but a statistically significant 8.0 percent effect (p-value<0.01) on whether it reported its non-starter scores. These findings are robust to a series of alternative empirical specifications.     

示范性实践教学基地先进经验及成果分析

教学实习基地是学生开展实践教学的重要场所,基地建设直接关系到实践教学质量,对培养高素质人才的探索精神、实践能力和创新能力有着十分重要的作用。本文在论述省外实习基地在专业培养中重要作用的基础上,总结海南师范大学体育学院省外基地建设经验及成果,并对省外实习基地建设过程中存在的不利因素进行分析。     

土木工程专业“测量学”课程教学改革探讨

"测量学"课程是土木工程专业至关重要的专业基础课。本文在分析目前"测量学"课程存在的问题的基础之上,提出应该针对土木工程专业采取差异式教学,明确"测量学"在土木工程专业中的定位,着重培养学生测绘成果应用与空间思考的能力,以更好地与专业相结合。基于此,作者提出了对教学内容与实践内容的建议。     

质量屋中相关关系确定的灰关联方法及应用

提出了一种基于灰色关联分析来研究质量屋中顾客需求与工程特性相关关系的方法。运用广义灰色关联分析中的绝对灰色关联分析进一步讨论,通过专家、顾客、厂商综合的打分方法来获得初始的顾客需求以及工程特性的重要度矩阵,然后通过相关的计算来得到绝对灰色关联度,最终得到需求-特性绝对灰色关联矩阵。再通过得到的矩阵进行优势分析,从而确定工程特性重要度的排序以及"瓶颈技术"。最后通过一个具体的实例来说明该方法的运用。     

独立审计质量的经济学透视

本文从需求和供给两方面分析了独立审计市场中的审计质量均衡状况及其成因,研究发现:一方面,由我国公司治理不完善而引发的对独立审计的代理需求不足,以及特定融资制度下对低质量审计的融资需求强劲,使得我国独立审计的自愿性需求严重匮乏,从而审计师缺乏提高审计质量的内在经济动机;另一方面,现有法规对审计师的激励不足、约束不够,因此目前审计师提供的审计服务质量难于达到社会公众的期望-《独立审计准则》的要求.最后,笔者针对出现的问题提出相应的政策建议.     

启发式教学法在高等数学教学中的应用

在高等数学教学中运用启发式教学法,让学生了解数学概念是怎样形成的,数学问题是怎样提出的,数学结论是怎样应用的,以及结论之间存在怎样的内在联系,有助于激发学生的学习兴趣,由消极被动学习变积极主动学习,并能提高学生分析问题解决问题的能力。