What Determines the Domestic Bias and Foreign Bias? Evidence from Mutual Fund Equity Allocations Worldwide

We examine how mutual funds from 26 developed and developing countries allocate their investment between domestic and foreign equity markets and what factors determine their asset allocations worldwide. We find robust evidence that these funds, in aggregate, allocate a disproportionately larger fraction of investment to domestic stocks. Results indicate that the stock market development and familiarity variables have significant, but asymmetric, effects on the domestic bias (domestic investors overweighting the local markets) and foreign bias (foreign investors under or overweighting the overseas markets), and that economic development, capital controls, and withholding tax variables have significant effects only on the foreign bias.     

Domestic Accounting Standards, International Accounting Standards, and the Predictability of Earnings

We investigate (1) whether the variation in accounting standards across national boundaries relative to International Accounting Standards (IAS) has an impact on the ability of financial analysts to forecast non-U.S. firms' earnings accurately, and (2) whether analyst forecast accuracy changes after firms adopt IAS. IAS are a set of financial reporting policies that typically require increased disclosure and restrict management's choices of measurement methods relative to the accounting standards of our sample firms' countries of domicile. We develop indexes of differences in countries' accounting disclosure and measurement policies relative to IAS, and document that greater differences in accounting standards relative to IAS are significantly and positively associated with the absolute value of analyst earnings forecast errors. Further, we show that analyst forecast accuracy improves after firms adopt IAS. More specifically, after controlling for changes in the market value of equity, changes in analyst following, and changes in the number of news reports, we find that the convergence in firms' accounting policies brought about by adopting IAS is positively associated with the reduction in analyst forecast errors.     

Debt Financing and Voluntary Adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards: Evidence from Korean Unlisted Firms

We investigate the effect of debt financing on the voluntary adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by unlisted firms and such adoption’s effect on bond credit rating. We find that unlisted firms with public debts are more likely to voluntarily adopt IFRS. Subsequent to the voluntary application of IFRS, the unlisted firms exhibit, on average, enhanced credit ratings. These findings suggest that the public debt market’s demand for high-quality financial reporting may drive those unlisted firms to voluntarily adopt IFRS. Furthermore, rating agencies seem to reward such firms by elevating their bond credit ratings.     

International Accounting Standards and Accounting Quality

We examine whether application of International Accounting Standards (IAS) is associated with higher accounting quality. The application of IAS reflects combined effects of features of the financial reporting system, including standards, their interpretation, enforcement, and litigation. We find that firms applying IAS from 21 countries generally evidence less earnings management, more timely loss recognition, and more value relevance of accounting amounts than do matched sample firms applying non‐U.S. domestic standards. Differences in accounting quality between the two groups of firms in the period before the IAS firms adopt IAS do not account for the postadoption differences. Firms applying IAS generally evidence an improvement in accounting quality between the pre‐ and postadoption periods. Although we cannot be sure our findings are attributable to the change in the financial reporting system rather than to changes in firms' incentives and the economic environment, we include research design features to mitigate effects of both.     

The Determinants and Implications of Mutual Fund Cash Holdings: Theory and Evidence

In this article, I examine the determinants and implications of equity mutual fund cash holdings. In cross-sectional tests, I find evidence generally supportive of a static trade-off model developed in the article. In particular, small-cap funds and funds with more-volatile fund flows hold more cash. However, I do not find that fund managers with better stock-picking skills hold less cash. Aggregate cash holdings by equity mutual funds are persistent and positively related to lagged aggregate fund flows. Aggregate cash holdings do not forecast future market returns, suggesting that equity funds as a whole do not have market timing skills.     

我国会计标准与国际会计标准的差异分析及国际趋同的思考

本文从我国B股上市公司、金融类上市公司双重审计的制度背景出发 ,以B股和金融类上市公司的年度报告中的双重审计差异为基础 ,对我国会计标准和国际会计标准进行综合比较研究 ,对存在的差异做出了分析与评价 ,并提供了有关的政策建议。     

权证会计处理的国际准则及其借鉴

本文在简要介绍权证产品及其要素、种类和功能的基础上,重点围绕国际会计准则关于金融工具会计的相关规定,对权证的会计处理原则和方法进行了探讨,并就其对我国会计及信息披露发展的启示进行了分析,以期为我国权证产品的成功推出进行一些有益的探索.     

国际财务报告准则第2号:以股份为基础的支付

目标1.本国际财务报告准则的目的是规范主体从事的以股份为基础的支付交易的财务报告.特别是,它要求主体在其损益和财务状况中反映以股份为基础的支付交易的影响,包括与授予雇员股票期权交易相关的费用.     

国际财务报告准则第1号—初次采用国际财务报告准则

目标 1.本国际财务报告准则的目标是确保实体首份按国际财务报告准则编制的财务报表,以及这些财务报表涵盖的部分期间的中期财务报告提供高质量的信息:     

Goodwill Accounting in Selected Countries and the Harmonization of International Accounting Standards

Economic and financial markets interpenetrate and national economies are increasingly interdependent. This results in a growing need for comparability of accounting procedures internationally. Accounting for goodwill illustrates this phenomenon. By specifying the recommended asset treatment for purchased, positive goodwill, and the five-year amortization period, IASC has taken a significant step towards harmonization of goodwill accounting. As noted in the article, however, the implications for consolidated income may be quite drastic. This is especially so with respect to the implications of the revised IAS 22 (following IAS ED 32) for potential leveraged corporate buy-outs.     

Fund Liquidation, Self-selection, and Look-ahead Bias in the Hedge Fund Industry

A wide range of empirical biases hampers hedge fund databases.In this paper we focus upon survival-related biases and disentanglelook-ahead biases due to self-selection of funds and due tofund termination. Self-selection arises because funds voluntarilyreport their information to data vendors and may decide to stopdoing so. By extending existing methodology, we analyze persistencein hedge fund performance over the period 1994–2000, takinginto account the above biases. The results show that look-aheadbiases due to liquidation and self-selection enforce each otherand may lead to overestimating expected returns by as much as8% per year. Overall, the results are consistent with positivepersistence in hedge fund returns at horizons of two and fourquarters.     

Outsourcing in the International Mutual Fund Industry: An Equilibrium View

We study outsourcing relationships among international asset management firms. We find that, in companies that manage both outsourced and in‐house funds, in‐house funds outperform outsourced funds by 0.85% annually (57% of the expense ratio). We attribute this result to preferential treatment of in‐house funds via the preferential allocation of IPOs, trading opportunities, and cross‐trades, especially at times when in‐house funds face steep outflows and require liquidity. We explain preferential treatment with agency problems: it increases with the subcontractor's market power and the difficulty of monitoring the subcontractor, and decreases with the subcontractor's amount of parallel in‐house activity.     

保险国际会计准则追踪

国际会计准则委员会(IASC,现已改组为IASB)在1999年末发布了关于保险国际会计准则的问题报告(Issues Paper).这是IASC在保险国际会计准则这一项目上的初步成果.     

中央银行会计标准重塑——基于国内外会计准则趋同背景下的思考

中国人民银行作为我国的中央银行,担负着制定和执行货币政策、维护金融稳定、提供金融服务等职责.公众对中央银行的会计信息愈来愈关注,而准确的会计信息需要科学的会计标准的规范.政府会计准则出台后,建立与国内外会计准则相适应的央行会计标准显得尤为迫切.本文通过分析目前人民银行会计标准的主要内容及其局限性,指出我国中央银行会计标准改革的必要性,并借鉴政府会计准则的经验尝试从央行会计准则的制定导向、核算基础、计量属性等方面重塑人民银行会计标准的基本构架.     

Measuring convergence of National Accounting Standards with International Financial Reporting Standards

This paper analyses three methods for measuring the success achieved in effecting convergence between any two sets of accounting standards. We begin by reviewing a measurement method based on the concept of Euclidean distances. We then propose two better measures (involving Jaccard's coefficients and Spearman's coefficients) to assess the progress of National Accounting Standards setting bodies in converging their standards with International Financial Reporting Standards [IFRS]. For illustrative purposes, we measure the convergence of National Accounting Standards in Portugal with International Accounting Standards [IAS] and IFRS over the period 1977–2003.     

The Impact of Adopting International Accounting Standards on the Harmonization of Accounting Practices

Over the past few decades numerous organizations have been actively participating in the efforts to improve the comparability of financial reporting. Many studies have discussed the benefits and drawbacks of comparability. This study investigated the affect on the harmonization, or comparability, of accounting practices when a sample of companies choose to use international accounting standards (IASs) when preparing financial reports.This study analyzed trends in the I index, a measure of concentration for the use of a particular accounting practice introduced by van der Tas, to determine if the choice of accounting methods by a sample of Swiss companies became more aligned with a sample of companies from three other countries. The study included a control sample of Swiss companies that did not switch from reporting using local Swiss standards during the same time period, 1988 through 1995. Four accounting practices were included; depreciation, inventory, financial statement cost basis, and consolidation practices. The practices used were compared with a sample of companies from three countries; Japan, the UK, and the US.The results indicated that across the 8-year period, the majority of the I indices comparisons were positive and statistically significant. However, the results did not support that these increases were due primarily to the adoption of IASs.