ACCOUNTING FOR THE COST OF CAPITAL: AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION

One of accounting's oldest issues, accounting for interest costs, has become a subject of increased concern in recent years. This study empirically addresses the issue of whether the cost of equity capital should be charged against income. Fourteen measures of the cost of equity capital are examined. The empirical tests involve contemporaneous correlation of accounting betas for each income measure with market betas for a sample of 200 companies. The results of these association tests indicate that income measures, net of the cost of equity capital, may have greater information content than income as presently reported.     

STOCK PRICE PROCESSES WITH DISCONTINUOUS TIME PATHS: AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION

This paper discusses the statistical properties of a mixed stochastic process and conducts a thorough empirical test of the process for an extensive group of common stocks and portfolios of stocks. It is found that a homogeneous diffusion process does not adequately describe stock price fluctuations and that there are significant discontinuities in the sample paths of stock prices. This result holds for both individual stocks and portfolios of various sizes. The statistical fit of a particular mixed diffusion-jump process to sample data is also demonstrated.     

CHARITY ACCOUNTING: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACT OF RECENT CHANGES

Since the early 1980s attempts have been made to reduce the diversity in accounting practice and improve the quality of the published financial statements of charities. Two major events in this process were the publication of the original Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) 2 in 1988 and its revision in 1995. Changes have been predicated on the dominance of the user-needs model and it is argued that inconsistencies in the financial statements of charities and the adoption of dubious accounting practices make it difficult for users of charity accounts to understand (and therefore use) the information provided. This paper presents the results of an empirical analysis of 151 financial statements of large fund raising charities in England and Wales as a basis for identifying the impact of both the original SORP and the revised SORP. The study's main conclusion is that charity accounting has improved significantly since the 1980s (where improvement is seen in terms of increasing compliance with recommended practice) and it is suggested that the impact of the revised SORP, like the original SORP, is likely to be major although not immediately so.     

FIRM PERFORMANCE AND SECURITY TYPE IN SEASONED OFFERINGS: AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF ALTERNATIVE SIGNALING MODELS

In this paper we examine the long-term performance of publicly traded firms that issue straight debt, convertible debt, or common stock. Declines in firm performance following issuance are consistent with declines in firm value at announcement and issuance, and suggest that convertible debt and common stock are substantially equivalent. This study is consistent with the pecking-order and Miller-Rock models, but inconsistent with the leverage-signaling model. Despite a significant decline following issuance, firms issuing common stock or convertible debt perform better, on average, than the industry before, at, and after issuance. This is consistent with younger, riskier, higher-growth firms being the predominant issuers of common stock and convertible debt.     

AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF FINANCIAL LIBERALIZATION AND THE EFFICIENCY OF EMERGING MARKET STOCK PRICES

The efficient markets hypothesis in finance suggests that as equity markets are liberalized and made more open to the public, equity prices should reflect the increased availability of information and be more efficiently priced. In this paper, we examine whether emerging market equity prices have become more efficient after financial liberalization. Using two sets of financial liberalization dates, a battery of econometric tests, and data from sixteen countries and three composite portfolios, we find that in spite of theory suggesting the opposite, liberalization does not seem to have improved the efficiency of emerging markets. In fact, most of our statistical tests indicate that the markets were already efficient before the actual liberalization.     

THE PERSONALITY,JOB SATISFACTION AND TURNOVER INTENTIONS OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN MALE AND FEMALE ACCOUNTANTS: AN EXAMINATION OF THE HUMAN CAPITAL AND STRUCTURAL/CLASS THEORIES

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants has made minority recruitment a major goal. Minorities, and especially African-Americans, have not been entering the accounting profession in proportion to their numbers in either the general population or the population of college graduates. Two competing explanations have been advanced that attempt to explain this failure@8ihuman capital theory, and structural/class theory. This paper reports on the results of a survey of a sample of 445 African-American accountants that attempts to test the validity of these two theories by assessing the respondents' personality characteristics, job satisfaction and turnover intentions. The distribution of personality type for the sample of African-American accountants was found to be similar to the results of a previous study conducted on groups of Anglos and Hispanics. Additionally, the job satisfaction and turnover intention results for the sample were found to be similar to those reported in previous studies. As a result, the findings fail to support the human capital theory, and implicitly lend support to the structural/class theory. Finally, anecdotal evidence from the respondents in two open-ended questions was examined. It indicated that African-American accountants' failure to advance in the profession was perceived to be attributed to a less than total commitment to diversity and the existence of glass ceilings in many organizations.     

INTERNALIZATION AND MARKET QUALITY: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION

We explore the relation between market quality and internalization through a pre- and postenactment analysis of the implementation of the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE) Price Improvement Rule on October 26, 1998. We find that the rule revision is accompanied by falls in the bid–ask spread and the variance of the pricing error and by rising internalization rates. This study informs proponents of market concentration, brokers, dealers, exchange administrators, and market regulators that a judicious regime of regulated internalization may be associated with superior market effectiveness.     

DECENTRALIZATION, ACCOUNTING CONTROLS AND PERFORMANCE OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS: A NEW ZEALAND EMPIRICAL STUDY

This paper reports the results of a study which was conducted in five departments of the New Zealand Government and investigated the relationships between (a) decentralization and the use of accounting control systems, (b) the use of accounting control systems and district office performance, and (c) the decentralization and district ofice performance. The performance was assessed using the managers' perception of their district office (unit's) performance. Data for the study were collected from 59 district office managers using a structured questionnaire. The results indicate that an increased decentralization is associated with a greater managerial use of accounting control systems which, in turn, is associated with improved district office performance.