A TAXONOMY OF THE PERCEIVED BENEFITS OF ACCRUAL ACCOUNTING AND BUDGETING: EVIDENCE FROM GERMAN STATES

Accrual Output‐Based Budgeting (AOBB) in government has been disputed intensely among academics and practitioners. While normative, conceptual, or theory‐based literature made promising claims about which benefits can be expected from reforming government accounting and budgeting, recent empirical research finds that at least some of these expectations have been massively overstated. The observed gap between promises and reality poses the question for the true benefits anew. Basing our analysis on practitioners’ judgment, we suggest a general and prioritized landscape of perceived benefits (taxonomy). Our findings are derived from 42 interviews conducted in the context of two German federal states. Mapping our results to prior claims in the literature, we reveal that the practitioners interviewed do not see upsides in areas that former research deems to be important while other and previously not emphasized areas, such as mindset changes, seem to convince in practical life. The results of our analysis offer a profound basis for further exploration of the benefits and/or even cost/benefit evaluations.     

ACCRUAL ACCOUNTING AND CASH ACCOUNTING: RELATIVE MERITS OF DERIVED ACCOUNTING INDICATOR NUMBERS

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relative merits of performance indicators derived from either an income statement and a balance sheet both based on accrual accounting, or cash flow accounting. The balance sheet number showed lower variability and a higher persistency than the cash flow accounting and the income statement numbers. This phenomenon was attributed to an income smoothing distortion and a selective market response hypothesis. One implication for the standard setting bodies may be to favour an asset/liability view of earnings rather than either a revenue/expense or cash flow view.     

THE SMOOTHING OF INCOME NUMBERS: SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE ON SYSTEMATIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CORE AND PERIPHERY INDUSTRIAL SECTORS

This study tests the effects of the dual economy on income smoothing behavior. It is hypothesized that a higher degree of smoothing of income numbers will be exhibited by firms in the periphery sector than by firms in the core sector as a reaction to different opportunity structures and experiences. The results indicate that a majority of firms may be resorting to income smoothing. A higher number is included among firms in the periphery sector.     

THE TERM STRUCTURE OF INTEREST RATES AS A COINTEGRATED SYSTEM: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM THE EUROCURRENCY MARKET

In this paper I examine the term structure of Eurocurrency interest rates from six countries (with maturities of one, two, three, and six months) using unit root tests and cointegration tests that are robust to departures from independent and identically distributed errors. The main conclusions are: (1) Eurocurrency interest rates have one (and only one) unit root when viewed individually, and (2) for each of the countries examined, Eurocurrency interest rates are cointegrated—with one equilibrium relationship—when viewed jointly. These conclusions are consistent with the weak form of the efficient market hypothesis and suggest that in efficient markets arbitrage generally prevents rates on different maturities of a given asset from drifting too far for an extended period.     

THE ROLE OF ACCOUNTING INFORMATION IN STOCK MARKET LIBERALIZATION: EVIDENCE FROM KOREA

Stock market liberalization is a decision by a country’s government to allow foreigners to buy securities in that country’s capital market. This study examines how the liberalization of the Korean stock market affected stock price behavior and changed the role of accounting information for investment decisions. The Korean stock market opened its door to foreign investment in 1991. Prior to this, market inefficiencies, such as the superfluous co-movement of stock prices with industry or market indices or investment based on rumor and speculation, were widespread. Since the opening of the stock market to foreigners, a more rational pricing behavior has emerged. This setting provides a unique opportunity to investigate how stock price behavior has changed with market liberalization and what was the role of accounting information in this process. Our results indicate that the co-movement behavior of stock prices by industry decreased and stock price differentiation based on individual firm characteristics increased after market liberalization. The results also show that the explanatory power of accounting numbers increased after market liberalization. Overall, the results imply that foreign investors contributed to the improvement of market efficiency with the opening up of capital markets in Korea. We believe that our results provide useful evidence to other capital markets that are in a similar situation.     

PERCEPTIONS OF AUSTRALIAN FINANCE MANAGERS ON THE IMPACT OF ADVERTISING ON THE ACCOUNTING PROFESSION: SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

This study examines the perceptions and attitudes of finance managers to the removal of advertising restrictions by public accounting firms. Twelve null hypotheses which were formulated and tested regarding the perceptions of finance managers to a range of issues related to advertising by public accounting firms indicated that younger finance managers without a tertiary education and who had no previous public accounting experience perceived greater overall positive benefits from complete removal of advertising restrictions. Older finance managers believed that greater overall detrimental effects would result if advertising restrictions were completely removed.     

THE IMPORTANCE OF LIQUIDITY AS A FACTOR IN ASSET PRICING

We employ the Fama‐French time‐series regression approach to examine liquidity as a risk factor affecting stock returns. Prior studies establish liquidity as an important consideration in investment decisions. Here, liquidity is found to be an important factor affecting portfolio returns, even after the effects of market, size, book‐to‐market equity, and momentum are considered. Nonzero intercepts remain, however, indicating continued missing risk factors.     

AN EMPIRICAL EVALUATION OF THE COMMUNICATION OF AUTHORITATIVE PRONOUNCEMENTS IN ACCOUNTING

The cloze procedure, a psycholinguistic technique, was used to empirically evaluate the communication of authoritative pronouncements in accounting. Three of the most recent pronouncements of five different authoritative bodies were tested via a random sample of 750 certified public accountants, 750 academic accountants, and 600 private accountants. Using the cloze procedure's 57% criterion level, evidence was found (contrary to expectations) that communication problems do not exist with either authoritative bodies or classes of accountants. However, evidence was found (as expected) that communication problems do exist with two of the fifteen authoritative pronouncements tested. I want to express my sincerest appreciation to the City University of New York PSC-BHE Research Award Program for the grant that made this project possible.     

SOME ECONOMIC DETERMINANTS OF MANAGEMENT LOBBYING FOR ALTERNATIVE METHODS OF ACCOUNTING: EVIDENCE FROM THE ACCOUNTING FOR INTEREST COSTS ISSUE

This paper extends the theory of management lobbying on accounting standards. Specifically, it is hypothesized that, in addition to the variables previously identified in literature, the capital structure of the firm would affect its management's lobbying position on an accounting standard. The results of an empirical investigation of the lobbying position of firms on the accounting for interest costs issue, reported in the paper, confirm the extended theory.     

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.     

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.