Fifty years of finance research in the Asia Pacific Basin

In this paper, we review the history of scholarly finance research in the Asia Pacific Basin. We do this by analysing the four leading regional finance journals – Accounting and Finance, Australian Journal of Management, International Review of Finance and the Pacific‐Basin Finance Journal – along five dimensions. The five dimensions are the most cited papers, noted authors, impact in terms of practice, research areas and a breakdown in terms of the development of the field according to Kuhnian concepts of normal science, anomalies and extraordinary science. We show that the Asia Pacific journals make a crucial contribution to research and practice both in the region and internationally.     

领导力与企业成长关系之研究

企业是一群人为成就某一种特定目的而成立的,企业的成立与生长又与企业领导人的领导力息息相关。而领导力这三个字叉是一个非常抽象的名词,有人以为是天生的艺术,又有人以为是可以在后天培养的,但这些都很难以引用具体的实例来加以印证。领导力到底是什么？是天生的,还是可以在后天培养的？它对企业之成长到底会产生什么样的影响？     

Drivers of research impact: evidence from the top three finance journals

We study the characteristics of all published papers in the top three finance journals (JF, JFE and RFS), and how these paper characteristics affect the number of citations in Google Scholar and the Web of Science database. First, we find the characteristics in the universalist perspective remain constant while the characteristics in the constructivist and presentation perspectives increase over time. Second, some characteristics are significantly different between the high-impact and the low-impact papers. Third, paper quality, research method, journal placement and paper age are the most important drivers. Last, different drivers play different roles in different journals.     

The demise of the ARC journal ranking scheme: an ex post analysis of the accounting and finance journals

The recent abolition of the ARC journal ranking scheme is indicative of some problematical features of journal ranking in general and the ARC scheme in particular. An alternative citation‐based ranking scheme is applied to the accounting and finance journals to highlight some loopholes in the abandoned ARC scheme and provide some suggestions for how to proceed with ERA 2012. By re‐ranking journals according to their citation indices, it is demonstrated that the ARC ranking placed a large number of journals where they do not belong. As a result, the ARC scheme induced some adverse behavioural changes with respect to preferred publication outlets.     

Twenty-one years of social and environmental accountability research: A coming of age

This study extends upon previous research into the profile and direction of social and environmental accounting research, analysing and critiquing 21 years of contemporary research in social and environmental accounting published particularly in four leading interdisciplinary accounting research journals covering the period 1988-2002 inclusive. It reflects upon selected seminal papers on the field, and presents an empirical analysis of SEA publication that updates Parker's (2005) findings. The prospect of a sharing of the territory between critical and managerialist approaches is envisaged, along with the application of multiple theoretical lenses. Social and environmental research show signs of more recent balancing between these two subject areas, while recent shifts in methodological approaches are increasingly emphasising the employment of content analysis/statistical relationships research and case/field/action/ethnograpic research. National practices/comparisons and regulations are leading topic areas occupying researchers. External disclosure, attitudinal studies and theoretical framework papers also attracted significant attention. The paper also overviews emerging research in three non-Anglo-Saxon countries and identifies leading and emerging scholars in the field. The SEA field exhibits considerable momentum, but is found to be largely driven by research and publishing infrastructure outside North American economics focussed research communities.     

From new deal institutions to capital markets: Commercial consumer risk scores and the making of subprime mortgage finance

The investment fueled US mortgage market has traditionally been sustained by New Deal institutions called government sponsored enterprises (GSEs). Known as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the GSEs once dominated mortgage backed securities underwriting. The recent subprime mortgage crisis has drawn attention to the fact that during the real estate boom, these agencies were temporarily overtaken by risk tolerant channels of lending, securitization, and investment, driven by investment banks and private capital players. This research traces the movement of a specific brand of commercial consumer credit analytics into mortgage underwriting. It demonstrates that what might look like the spontaneous rise (and fall) of a ‘free’ market divested of direct government intervention has been thoroughly embedded in the concerted movement of calculative risk management technologies. The transformations began with a sequence of GSE decisions taken in the mid-1990’s to implement a consumer risk score called a FICO^® into automated underwriting systems. Having been endorsed by the GSEs, this scoring tool was gradually hardwired throughout the industry to become a distributed and collective ‘market device’. As the paper will show, once modified by specific GSE interpretations the calculative properties generated by these credit bureau scores reconfigured mortgage finance into two parts: the conventional, risk-adverse, GSE conforming ‘prime’ and an infrastructurally distinct, risk-avaricious, investment grade ‘subprime’.     

What happened to the class of Year 2000: Examining their research and employment records

Today's academic environment requires high levels of research from faculty to earn promotion and tenure [P&T], merit pay, summer research grants, and other university resources. Increasingly rigorous doctoral programs have increased the competition for publishing high quality academic research. Those individuals seeking faculty positions should recognize the varying research standards of different strata of accounting programs. Most P&T committees compare candidates' research productivity to that of schools in their strata (i.e., their peer or aspirational schools). This study thus examines the research productivity through 2009 for all Year 2000 graduates from U.S. accounting doctoral programs. Information is categorized by different strata of schools to highlight current research accomplishments, and, by implication, research requirements. These results should help faculty and university administrators make better informed decisions.     

第十五届金融展:金融机构与IT企业同奏和谐金融主旋律

9月13日～16日,由中国人民银行科技司和中国银行业监督管理委员会信息中心支持,中国金融电子化公司主办的"第十五届中国国际金融(银行)技术暨设备展览会"(以下简称"本届金融展")在北京展览馆成功举     

A snapshot of public finance research from immediately prior to the pandemic: IIPF 2020

As the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped public policies and government finances, it has also influenced the topics that public finance economists are researching. Because the 2020 International Institute of Public Finance Congress featured papers that were submitted prior to the start of the pandemic, the Congress allows us to reflect on the state of research prior to the pandemic’s shock to both fiscal policies and our worldview. In this article, the Editors of International Tax and Public Finance reflect on interesting papers that were presented at this internationally representative conference in public economics. The exercise provides insight on where the field of public economics was heading prior to the pandemic and will provide a yardstick to see how the field evolves in the coming years afterward.

     

Giving credit where credit is due: Summary analysis of the most prolific authors in 15 high-impact accounting journals

The most prolific contributing authors to a set of high-impact accounting journals are summarized. These contributors are an unusually productive and successful group, accounting for a disproportionate share of the appearances in this significant set of the academic literature. Additionally, findings are presented demonstrating that the second tier of accounting journals tend to be dominated by the same researchers who dominate the top-tier journals, thus suggesting that getting published in the second tier of accounting academic journals may be as difficult a hurdle as publishing in the top tier.     

Beyond the ticket and the brand: imagining an accounting research future

This paper presents a reflective critique of the current university environment and the state of accounting research with a view to envisaging the latter’s forward trajectory, particularly in terms of emerging subject areas, theoretical perspectives and methodological traditions. It considers the contemporary fixation upon research performance indicators and warns of their associated impact on the role and orientation of academic researchers. The emergence of specialist interdisciplinary and qualitative research communities within the accounting discipline are presented as opportunities for the invigoration of the accounting project. Nonetheless, the pursuit of research esteem indicators is argued to risk disengaging researchers from policy and practice concerns. Future roles, responsibilities and intentions of scholars are visited in the light of these observations.     

Accounting research: An analysis of theories explored in doctoral dissertations and their applicability to Systems Theory

This study examined theories used in accounting doctoral dissertations and found that dissertations in this discipline test theories drawn from economics, finance, psychology, and sociology, with 53% from economics and finance and 27% from psychology. Further, a primary conclusion of this paper is that doctoral research in accounting explores subsets of organizational activity consistent with the premises of Systems Theory.     

Measuring institutional trading costs and the implications for finance research: The case of tick size reductions

Using proprietary institutional trade data, we construct a price impact measure that represents the costs faced by institutional investors. We show that many widely used liquidity measures do not adequately capture institutional trading costs. We then find that institutional trading costs are not dramatically impacted by decimalization, casting doubt on the widely used identification strategy that employs decimalization as an exogenous shock to liquidity, particularly institutional liquidity. Indeed, we find that conclusions from prior research are significantly altered when we measure liquidity using institutional trading data.     

Interventionist research in accounting: reflections on the good,the bad and the ugly

Our paper advances understanding of interventionist research (IVR) as a qualitative accounting research approach. It reflects on the potential value, challenges and key issues, as manifested by the good, the bad and the ugly. The reflection contributes towards clarifying the IVR landscape, thereby forging a future path for IVR as a legitimate qualitative methodology, to enthuse qualitative researchers to produce accounting research relevant to theory, practice and society. The primary contribution is synthesising the interventionist theory and practice literature encompassing a view of the good, the bad and the ugly in interventionist accounting research.     

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.     

A possible explanation of the gender gap among accounting academics: evidence from the choice of research field

Despite the significant increase in the number of women in accounting research over past decades, the percentage of female full professors in accounting is still low. One of the problems may relate to the research area(s) they choose to specialize in. Is the relatively slow promotion of women due to their decision to concentrate in ‘nonmainstream’ fields of research? In this study, we collect data on 1,042 male and female accounting academics. Using the research interests declared on each academic web page, we find that accounting researchers show no significant gender differences in their choice of research fields. Hence, we conclude that the underpromotion of women cannot be attributed to their choice of ‘nonmainstream’ fields.     

In search of E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Company: the perils of archival research

The purpose of this paper is to describe the pitfalls of archival research into the bookkeeping records of a specific firm, E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., and how it may lead to misinterpretation and misdirection. Traditionally, the bookkeeping records of an individual or organization have provided a great deal of information to researchers who use the records for many different research projects. Such research is costly, however. The researcher is concerned with the analytical techniques of the historian, or even the detective; the time-consuming, methodical routine of familiarization with the records; and the analysis and interpretation of the significance of the techniques and trends evident in the data base. The sources for this traditional archival research project were many, varied, and often contradictory. For the record books of the DuPont Company, an early 19th century gunpowder manufactory, the process of understanding, interpreting, and validating the record keeping led to a number of misleading, confusing, and time-consuming issues which had to be resolved. These issues may have implications for other accounting historians since the need to search for the 'story' behind a particular research project will in all likelihood be encountered in the course of other research. Researchers must understand that they are able to rely on secondary sources, when they exist, only as long as they remain circumspect when depending on the secondary interpretation of primary sources, and that even the primary sources themselves may lead the researcher astray.     

Accounting research and researchers of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century: an international survey of authors, ideas and publications

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the former glory of Italian accounting was overshadowed by its decline during the eighteenth century, and literature from France, England, Germany, America and other countries took centre-stage. 'Theories of accounts' (rather than 'accounting theories') dominated not merely the early but also the later part of this century when Italian accounting had regained a prominent position beside other countries. The relation of those theories to the 'charts of accounts'-which later became so prominent in Continental Europe is historically important. The controversies over personalistic versus materialistic accounts and that between entity versus proprietary theories, as well as the emergence of other theories are discussed with reference to individual authors. Diverse topics from railroad accounting and auditing to various aspects of cost accounting are investigated. Particularly important are the pioneering efforts of this period that anticipated further developments. These manifested themselves in the following ideas: entity theory, flow of funds statement, matrix accounting, different aspects of valuation, allocation and depreciation, price-level adjustments and indexation, current values, exit values, residual income valuation, managerial control, the emergence of competing accounting (and Bilanz) theories, the separation of fixed from variable costs, fixed and flexible budgeting, zero-based budgeting, PERT, transfer prices, break-even charts, variance analysis, job-order costing, labour and machine hour rates, standard costing, price determination, integrating financial and cost accounting, clean surplus theory, agricultural accounting, holding gains, and other topics. Appendix A offers an overview of Nineteenth century scholars concerned with accounting history (together with one representative work of each), and Appendix B lists the nationally (and often internationally) prominent names of accounting authors born in the nineteenth century but also or exclusively active during the twentieth century. The paper integrates approximately 400 publications of which less than half are of the English tongue.