会计监管:依据探析与工具改进

会计监管属于规制经济学研究的大范畴,“公共利益理论”为会计监管提供了基本依据,通过对会计信息失灵原因的进一步分析,章指出“克服市场不完善导致的高质量会计信息需求不足”及“改善契约不完全造成的产权不明”是我国政府主导的会计监管更本质的原因;金融监管是经济监管领域较为成熟、甚为重要的部分,金融监管工具改革的经验体现了现代监管理念的变化,可以为会计监管工具设计和改革提供借鉴和支持。     

Culture and accounting in Indonesia: An empirical examination

This study examines the relationships among the cultural characteristics of Indonesian society, reporting practices of Indonesian firms, and accounting standards promulgated by the Association of Indonesian Accountants. It is argued that an empirical relation exists between the change in cultural values, as conceived by Hofstede's theory of the five dimensions of cultural values (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, masculinity, and time horizon and the change in accounting values as captures by Gray's four dimensions (professionalism, conservatism, secrecy, and uniformity). Using LISREL to evaluate data between 1981 and 1992, three of Hofstede's five cultural values (power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism) have significant relationships with one or more accounting value. This limited confirmation of the culture-accounting relationships suggest that particular historical and economic configurations must be considered in longitudinal analysis. The conflicting influences of extensive government involvement in the economy and nascent market competition are a possible explanation of the Indonesian results.     

Introducing International Accounting Standards to an emerging capital market: relative familiarity and language effect in Egypt

The purpose of this study is to assess the effect of relative familiarity and language accessibility on the International Accounting Standards (IASs) disclosures when IASs are first introduced in an emerging capital market. The study focuses on the annual reports of listed non-financial companies in Egypt when IASs were first introduced. The method used applies a disclosure index measurement to a sample of listed company annual reports and evaluates relative compliance with IASs in relation to corporate characteristics. The results show that for relatively less familiar requirements of IASs, the extent of compliance is related to the type of audit firm used and to the presence of a specific statement of compliance with IASs. A lower degree of compliance with less familiar IASs disclosure is observed consistently across a range of company characteristics. Consideration of agency theory and capital need theory would lead to prior expectation of a distinction in disclosure practices between different categories of companies. The results were, therefore, counterintuitive to expectations where the regulations were unfamiliar or not available in the native language, indicating that new variables have to be considered and additional theoretical explanations have to be found in future disclosure studies on emerging capital markets.     

论我国证券市场会计监管问题

如何加强对证券市场的会计监管,是关系到我国证券市场能否稳定、健康有序发展的重大问题,本文根据我国证券市场会计监管的现状,提出了我国证券市场会计监管思路是需要进一步规范与完善会计准则和会计制度,证券市场监管政策需要合理化,此外还必须强化注册会计师审计的独立性.     

Development of accounting regulation in Jordan

This study examines the development of accounting regulation in Jordan with emphasis on the dominant environmental factors that influence it. In order to have a better understanding of Jordan's present accounting practices, and its future development tendencies, we examine the path of accounting in Jordan since the early days of the nineteenth century, and analyze how Jordan's accounting environment — political, economic, legal and cultural — influenced the development of accounting in Jordan. We also examine Jordan's recent move towards full adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and find that Jordan's colonial past has exerted a strong influence. In addition, we conclude that political and economic factors, through privatization and the resulting accounting reforms, contributed more to the development of accounting practices than other environmental factors. Privatization led to reforming Jordan's disclosure regulation and laying down of the corporate-governance policy framework. Our conclusions could be of interest to other countries, particularly developing countries, who want to improve the quality of their accounting disclosures and practices.     

The Development of Accounting and Reporting in Ghana

In this paper, we examine the economic, political, and legal systems as well as the institutional factors that influence the accounting and disclosure practices in Ghana. The impact of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on disclosure is also investigated, as Ghana has recently completed full adoption. We find that the accounting and reporting practices are significantly influenced by legal, political, institutional, and economic factors and that the regulatory environment is neither effective nor efficient due to the weak monitoring and enforcement of compliance. Although there has been some recent progress, the Companies' Code, which is the corporate legal framework of Ghana, must be updated to reflect the dynamic nature of world operations. This study advances the course of standards setters, regulators, accounting practitioners, and policymakers to improve the corporate reporting and accounting practices. Urgent measures need to be undertaken to reform and build the capacities of institutions charged with the responsibility of regulating and monitoring Ghanaian accounting and reporting practices to ensure best practices and build investors' confidence.     

Lobbying on accounting standard setting in the parliamentary environment of Germany

This paper employs an expertise framework to analyze the case of lobbying on the modernization of German accounting regulation between 2007 and 2009. The parliamentary context of accounting standard setting in Germany provides a unique opportunity for an examination of lobbyists’ and parliamentarians’ use of rhetoric in the form of arguments and myths in the presence of an expertise gap between both parties. Lobbyists successfully follow rhetoric strategies of providing knowledge and demonstrating expertise to parliamentarians in the form of using a mixed approach of conceptual and self-referential arguments when expressing a neutral opinion. Apart from their argumentative rhetoric, lobbyists also create myths that transfer knowledge in a more subtle way by employing signifiers that are disentangled from the underlying message to be communicated. Parliamentarians respond by using self-referential arguments in cases where they support the regulatory proposals and enrich their arguments by continuing and amplifying the myths created by lobbyists. Parliamentarians’ adoption of these strategies demonstrates the effectiveness of the transfer of knowledge and provides evidence of the strategic exploitation of the expertise gap by lobbyists.     

An investigation about origins: A brief history of the PCAOB'S regulatory model

The scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, and Arthur Andersen are frequently cited as among the principal reasons for the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act [Pub.L. 107–204, 116 Stat. 745, enacted July 30, 2002] (SOX) as well as the genesis of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). The PCAOB is a relatively new agency that was created to a play vital role as the regulator for auditors of U.S. public companies. For such an important organization, its background remains relatively unexamined. This paper seeks to extend the existing literature by examining the historical origins of the PCAOB and identifying the regulatory influences and prototypes of this regulatory agency. Was the organization's regulatory structure chosen arbitrarily? Were there various events as well as exemplar entities in the preceding decades that played an integral role in the eventual creation of the PCAOB? This research seeks to answer these questions.     

Critical reflections on research approaches, accounting regulation and the regulation of accounting

The design and choice of research approaches, the nature of accounting regulation and the reactions to these regulations in organisations, involving, in effect, the regulation of accounting, are three themes of considerable importance in accounting research. They are the three themes that have dominated the research agenda of the author throughout his academic career. This paper explores the nature of these three key research themes developing some critical reflections on what has been discovered about each of these themes using the author's sole and joint research and publications as a vehicle for this analysis.     

An Experimental Market's Investigation of Discretionary Financial Disclosure

The extent to which market forces can induce full financial disclosure by managers has long been an issue of interest to regulators. Investigating this phenomenon with naturally occurring data produces a major obstacle: since managers' private information sets are unknown, it is necessary to make assumptions about them in order to interpret the nature (e.g., favourable or unfavourable, income increasing or income decreasing) of the information that is disclosed. The validity of the inferences relies critically on the validity of these assumptions. The present study uses a laboratory experiment to test three hypotheses derived from prior analytical and empirical research: (H1) When disclosure costs are zero, managers voluntarily disclose all (good and bad) news; (H2) When disclosure costs are positive. managers only disclose news which exceeds some threshold: and (H3) The mandatory disclosure of non-proprietary information induces an increase in the disclosure of correlated. proprietary information. One hundred and fifty-six subjects participated in markets with one firm manager and three investors. Over thirteen independent periods, the managers decided whether to truthfully disclose the liquidation value of the asset under their stewardship, and the investors submitted competing bids for the asset. With costless disclosure. investors price-protected themselves when managers withheld information, but the price penalty that they imposed was insufficient to induce full disclosure. With positive disclosure cost, investors reduced the price penalty that they imposed for non-disclosure, and managers disclosed proportionally fewer of the less extreme good news. Finally, mandatory disclosure of information had no significant impact on the voluntary disclosure of correlated proprietary information. Discussion centres on our failure to support the (equilibrium) prediction from analytical research that full disclosure should obtain when disclosures are costless. Several limitations of the study are examined. and it remains an open question whether additional trials (periods) in the present study might have provided full disclosure.     

On accounting standards and fair valuation of life insurance and pension liabilities

The actuarial profession is increasingly teaming up with financial economists for a fruitful cooperation on the proper valuation of life insurance and pension (L&P) liabilities. This has been a natural consequence of a recent sharply increased focus on market values in financial reports of L&P companies from regulators, standard setters, the financial press, stakeholders, and others with an interest in the L&P business.

This article provides a financial economist's point of view on recent developments in relation to the fair valuation of L&P liabilities. The role of accounting standards and the background for the international harmonization in this field are first discussed. We then review and explain the concept of fair value and provide a general view on appropriate techniques for estimating fair values of L&P liabilities in accordance with the definition of the concept. The paper also contains a section which briefly reviews recent and quite innovative regulatory initiatives in relation to market value reporting in the Danish market for life and pension insurance.     

Recent developments in the accounting profession in New Zealand: A case of deprofessionalization?

The international accounting literature is replete with references to the importance of professionalization of accounting in its development. While professionalization of accounting is progressing at a rapid rate in many developing countries, the recent developments in some western industrialized countries seem to suggest a different trend. This paper proposes to investigate these developments and provide a critical analysis focusing on one western industrialized country (i.e., New Zealand).Evidence is provided in the paper to show that (a) the boundaries between accountancy and other occupations are becoming increasingly blurred; (b) the dominance of accounting controls in organizations is being challenged; (c) the profession does not control access to accounting knowledge; and (d) the profession is unable to prevent government intervention in the areas of work standards, and bureaucratic controls in the work place. The paper argues that the recent changes in the accounting profession in New Zealand suggest a trend towards deprofessionalization.     

武警部队会计的发展过程与展望

武警部队会计作为一种特殊会计种类,其产生发展与国家经济和社会全面发展密切相关。通过回顾26年来武警部队会计的发展过程,分析其前进的推动力量,可以为持续进行武警部队会计改革提供利器。武警会计制度、武警会计机构和会计人员、武警会计信息化、武警会计理论构成了武警会计的整体框架,这正是所要分析的对象。     

Accounting, Intangible Assets, Stock Market Activity, and Measurement and Disclosure Policy—Views From the U.K.

This paper considers the impact of U.K. practices with respect to the measurement and disclosure of intangible assets, focusing on R&D activities. We first update prior U.K. work relating R&D activities to market prices. Second, given the clearly identified role of disclosure outside of the financial statements in helping market participants value R&D expenditures, we consider whether market forces are generally sufficient to ensure adequate disclosures with respect to intangibles by considering the cases of two biotechnology firms involved in the issuance of misleading disclosures. Within this context, we consider how disclosure regulation and enforcement mechanisms have evolved in recent years, and how this evolution has likely been affected by our 'scandal' cases. Our conclusions are that the case of the U.K. does not give rise to any wide-scale concerns about the economic ill-effects caused by the current state of recognition and disclosure with respect to expenditures on intangibles. Further, market forces are unlikely to be sufficient in ensuring honest and timely disclosures with respect to intangibles, but the combination of official regulation and voluntary self-regulation appears to have stemmed the tide of any such disclosure scandals in the U.K.     

Politics, Processes and the Future of Australian Accounting Standards

The perspective of public interest and interest group theories of regulation is adopted to consider the future of Australian accounting standards following major reforms proposed by the Australian Commonwealth government as part of its 1997 Corporate Law Economic Reform Program (CLERP). Interest groups in the Australian environment are identified. Their lobbying had influenced the initial proposals; and their reactions when the CLERP proposals were published resulted in substantial modifications to the CLERP proposals, which had initially recommendedthat International Accounting Standards (IASs) be adopted as national standards from 1 January 1999.
The role of accounting standards and the structure of standard setting are explored. The political nature of standard setting is illustrated through a review of the CLERP proposals, submissions of various interest groups and the government's responses to them. The central arguments are that key assumptions underlying the CLERP proposals are flawed, and that the CLERP proposals could not achieve the outcomes desired of them.
It seems inevitable, however, that international standards eventually will supplant domestic standards. In the longer term, Australian standard setters seem destined to have a diminished role in the international standard setting arena.     

Agenda formation and accounting standards setting: lessons from the standards setters

There are many studies on lobbying of accounting standards, but the technical agenda of regulators is taken as ‘given’ and why a particular topic was admitted to the agenda is not investigated. Agenda formation is important as control of the agenda determines which topics get regulated and the form of the regulatory response. A few studies have explored agenda formation across regulatory institutions but are largely silent on the role of individual decision makers and technical staff. However, the standards setters have sought to explain their agenda processes. This paper reviews statements by the members of accounting standards setting agencies about their experiences of agenda formation. It identifies insights gained from standard setters and makes some suggestions for future research.