Bankruptcy,absolute priority,and the pricing of risky debt claims

In practice, there are substantial deviations from the doctrine of ‘absolute priority’, which governs the rights of the firm's claimholders in the event of bankruptcy. To determine whether or not the possibility of such deviations is reflected in the prices of the firm's securities, this study examines the risk and return characteristics of financial claims against firms in court-supervised bankruptcy proceedings. Debt claims against bankrupt firms are indeed ‘risky’, exhibiting levels of systematic risk similar to that of common stocks in general. While some of the findings are anomalous, the data are generally consistent with the view that the capital market ‘properly’ prices risky debt claims to reflect both their risk characteristics and the possibility of departures from the doctrine of absolute priority.     

Postnormal times revisited

Postnormal times (PNT) have been characterised by complexity, chaos and contradictions. But PNT theory has come under criticism for (allegedly) suggesting that ‘the world has entered an Omega phase’, using Alliterative Logic, and being western in nature. This paper answers some of the critics of PNT, provides further evidence of postnormal phenomenon, and examines the current trends that are taking us towards a postnormal ‘extended present’. Finally, it explores what PNT implies for futures studies and what it means to ‘be postnormal’.     

An Analysis of the Content of Corporate Submissions on Proposed Accounting Standards in the UK

In this paper, ‘content analysis’ is used to investigate corporate submissions on proposed accounting standards on two levels. First, the written submissions of companies on 28 of the first 31 UK Exposure Drafts (EDs) are examined in detail for any economic or political references. A moderate level of evidence is found to support the hypothesis that some potential economic and political consequences of ED proposals are a major interest of corporate management. The second ‘content analysis’ endeavours to identify the relative significance to corporate management of 27 EDs by simply comparing the absolute and relative numbers both of respondents and also of lines in their ‘comments’. This approach could be used to derive ‘weights’ for analytical models that consider the economic and political consequences of groups of ED ‘comments’ together. It is found that there are statistically significant high positive correlations between the results of the two content analyses. That is, EDs that in their ‘comments’ received the most (least) frequent references to economic and political consequences, also tended to be the most (least) significant in terms of volume of submissions. This indicates that the EDs included in the study were remarkably consistent in their overall economic and political impact on corporate commentators.     

Capitalized intangibles and financial analysts

We examine whether firms that capitalize a higher proportion of their underlying intangible assets have higher analyst following, lower dispersion of analysts’ earnings forecasts and more accurate earnings forecasts relative to firms that capitalize a lower proportion. Under Australian generally accepted accounting principles, capitalization of intangible assets has become increasingly ‘routine’ since the late 1980s. It is predicted that this experience leads Australian analysts to expect firms with relatively more certain intangible investments to signal this fact by capitalizing intangible assets. Our results are consistent with this. We find that capitalization of intangible assets is associated with higher analyst following and lower absolute earnings forecast error for firms with a stock of underlying intangible assets. Our tests suggest a weaker association between capitalization and lower earnings forecast dispersion. We conclude that there are benefits for analysts, for management to have the option to capitalize intangible assets. These findings suggest that IAS 38 Intangible Assets and AASB 138 Intangible Assets reduce the usefulness of financial statements.     

The dividend–price ratio does predict dividend growth: International evidence

Unpredictable dividend growth by the dividend–price ratio is considered a ‘stylized fact’ in post war US data. Using long-term annual data from the US and three European countries, we revisit this stylized fact, and we also report results on return predictability. We make two main contributions. First, we document that for the US, results for long-horizon predictability are crucially dependent on whether returns and dividend growth are measured in nominal or real terms, and this difference is due to long-term inflation being strongly negatively predictable by the dividend–price ratio. The impact of inflation is to reinforce real return predictability and to reduce – or change direction of – real dividend growth predictability. This provides an explanation for the strong predictability of long-horizon real returns in the ‘right’ direction, and the strong predictability of long-horizon real dividend growth in the ‘wrong’ direction, that we see in US post war data. Second, we find that predictability patterns in three European stock markets are in many ways different from what characterize the US stock market. In particular, in Sweden and Denmark dividend growth is strongly predictable by the dividend–price ratio in the ‘right’ direction while returns are not predictable. The results for the UK are mixed. Our results are robust to a number of changes in the modeling framework. We discuss the results for dividend growth predictability in terms of the ‘dividend smoothing hypothesis’.     

Using dialogues with customers as sources of knowledge

Every day organizations have numerous dialogues with (potential) customers. The representatives of the organization see themselves presented with the daunting task of how to identify and use the most relevant information that the customer communicated. Equally vexing for these dialogue participants is how to ensure that what is intended with a certain utterance in a dialogue is understood in the way the speaker intended. It is therefore not surprising that not all dialogues lead to satisfactory results for the participants. Customers tell organizations in dialogues (via media like e‐mail, telephone, letters or ‘physical’ visits) what they expect that the organization needs to know to be able to serve them in a satisfactory way. Equally, organizations would like to know whether the message they are communicating is understood in the way the organization intended and if the products or services they are providing matches any persistent (latent) need of a selected (group of) customer(s). This research is aimed at developing a computational instrument to come to terms with these issues. The seminal theory of Clark (1996) might assist us in this endeavour. In particular, the concepts of common ground and larger purpose present possibilities that could support us in our attempts to gain more knowledge from dialogues with customers. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Commonalities Between Added Value Ratios and Traditional Return on Capital Employed

This paper provides an empirical comparison between two versions of a new accounting ratio devised by Kay and Davis (1990a, 1990b) and Kay (1993) and the traditional capital employed (ROCE) ratio. The new measures, ‘added value on inputs employed’ (AVIE) and ‘added value on net output’ (AVNO), are both based on a version of residual income they label ‘added value’, but differ in choice of scaling variable. Empirical evidence is provided in this paper on AVIE and AVNO, including cross-sectional patterns, distributional properties, sensitivity to alternative specifications, and rank-ordering and serial-correlation performance compared with ROCE. AVIE and AVNO differ markedly from ROCE in terms of absolute levels and account for at most half of the latter's cross-sectional variation. On the other hand, the results indicate that both the rank orderings and rank predictions of the different measures are very similar. The distributional properties of the added value ratios are sensitive to choice of scaling variable, suggesting that considerable care has to be exercised in drawing conclusions from the absolute rankings of these measures. The new added value ratios provide signals about firm rankings that differ only to a limited degree from those rendered by the traditional ROCE ratio.     

Making things the same: Gases,emission rights and the politics of carbon markets

This paper analyses the development of carbon markets: markets in permits to emit greenhouse gases or in credits earned by not emitting them. It describes briefly how such markets have come into being, and discusses in more detail two aspects of the efforts to ‘make things the same’ in carbon markets: how different gases are made commensurable, and how accountants have struggled to find a standard treatment of ‘emission rights’. The paper concludes by discussing the attitude that should be taken to carbon markets (for example by environmentalists) and the possibility of developing a ‘politics of market design’ oriented to making such markets more effective tools of abatement.     

Consumer-generated content and source effects in financial services advertising: An experimental study

Although advertising has previously been under the control of organizations and their advertising agencies, recent advances in technology have seen the emergence of what has come to be known as ‘consumer-generated advertising’. Consumers are now creating their own ads for the brands they love and hate, using inexpensive software and powerful personal computers, and then distributing these via social networks such as YouTube. The consequences for traditional advertisers are profound. Although services marketing scholars have begun to pay attention to this phenomenon, little is known about the source effects of these types of ads, for example whether viewers think they were created by firms, or consumers like themselves. This article describes a series of experiments designed to test source effects in the context of consumer-generated ads in a financial services context, in which it is found that some source effects are present. Implications for marketers as well as future research directions are identified.     

Foreign institutional investment: Is governance quality at home important?

This paper examines the investment preferences of foreign institutional investors investing in the U.S. market. We analyse both firm and country-level determinants that influence the foreign institutional investors' allocation choices. At the country level, we find that the governance quality in a foreign institutional investor's home country is a determinant of their decision to invest in the U.S. market. Our findings indicate that investors who come from countries with governance setups similar to that of the U.S. invest more in the United States. The investment levels though, are more pronounced for countries with governance setups just below that of the U.S. Our results are consistent with both the ‘flight to quality’ and ‘familiarity’ arguments, and help reconcile prior contradictory empirical evidence. At the firm level, we present unequivocal evidence in favour of the familiarity argument. Foreign institutional investors domiciled in countries with high governance quality prefer to invest in U.S. firms with high corporate governance quality. This effect is primarily driven by grey (non-monitoring) institutional investors.     

Accounting in Babel? Constructing social accounting as a multi-logical performance

All social practices reproduce certain taken-for-granteds about what exists. Constructions of existence (ontology) go together with notions of what can be known of these things (epistemology), and how such knowledge might be produced (methodology)—along with questions of value or ethics. Increasingly, reflective practitioners—whatever their practice—are exploring the assumptions they ‘put to work’ and the conventions they reproduce. Questions are being asked about how to ‘cope’ with change in a postmodern world, and ethical issues are gaining more widespread attention. If we look at these constructions then we often find social practices: (a) give central significance to the presumption of a single real world; (b) centre a knowing subject who should strive to be separate from knowable objects, i.e. people and things that make up the world; (c) a knowing subject who can produce knowledge (about the real world) that is probably true and a matter of fact rather than value (including ethics). Social practices of this sort often produce a right–wrong debate in which one individual or group imposes their ‘facts’ (and values) on others. Further they often do so using claims to greater or better knowledge (e.g. science, facts …) as their justifications.We use the term “relational constructionism” as a summary reference to certain assumptions and arguments that define our “thought style”. They are as follows: fact and value are joined (rather than separate); the knower and the known—self and other—are co-constructed; knowledge is always a social affair—a local–historical–cultural (social) co-construction made in conversation, in other kinds of action, and in the artefacts of human activities (‘frozen’ actions so to speak), and so; multiple inter-actions simultaneously (re)produce multiple local cultures and relations, this said; relations may impose one local reality (be mono-logical) or give space to multiplicity (be multi-logical). In this view, the received view of science is but one (socially constructed) way of world making, as is social constructionism, and different ways have different—and very real—consequences.In this paper, we take our relational constructionist style of thinking to examine differing constructions of foot and mouth disease (FMD)¹ in the UK. We do so in order to highlight the dominant relationship construction. We argue that this could be metaphorised as ‘accounting in Babel’—as multiple competing monologues—many of which remained very local and subordinated by a dominant logic. However, from a relational constructionist point of view, it is also possible to argue that social accounting can be done in a more multi-logical way that gives space to dialogue and multiplicity. In the present (relational constructionist) view, accounting is no longer ‘just’ a question of knowledge and methodology but also a question of value and power. To render accounting practices more ethical they must be more multi-voiced and enable ‘power to’ rather than ‘power over’.     

Looking for a safe haven after fancy thrills: a psychometric analysis of risk perception in alpine tourist destinations

Visitors’ risk perceptions have been found to influence the on‐site behaviour of tourists and their intention to return to a destination or to recommend it to others. The present study analyses the perception of tourism risks in the Tyrol, Austria. Building on the psychometric paradigm, participants (N = 207) assessed 15 vacation risks on nine risk characteristics that are derived from psychometric research and completed with characteristics relevant in a tourism context. Findings suggest that additionally to managing the most likely risks, alpine destinations should be prepared to cope with worst case scenarios such as ‘potable water poisoning’, ‘food poisoning’, ‘breaking of an embankment dam’, ‘rock fall on a village’, ‘cable car accident’ and ‘terrorist attack’. Considering these rather low‐probability risks is of decisive importance since such risks are especially prone to evoke public outrage if they – against all expectations – result in damaging events.     

Risk,responsibility and negative responses: a qualitative study of parental trust in childhood vaccinations

Abstract

Childhood vaccination programmes have benefits that far outweigh risks, in public health terms. However, some parents decide not to immunise their children. This paper explores the ways in which such parents talk about the perceived risks and benefits incurred by vaccinating (or not vaccinating) their children. Between 2013 and 2016, we undertook 29 in-depth interviews with non-vaccinating and/or ‘vaccine hesitant’ parents in Fremantle, Western Australia and Adelaide, South Australia. Our analysis of the interviews identified particular constructions of risk and responsibility. All interviews were transcribed and analysed using both inductive and deductive processes. Our analysis mirrors the chronological process through which parents navigate risk. We start with the concept of ‘responsibilisation’, which underpins parental engagement with decision-making and praxis. We then explore how responsiblisation takes the form of detailed and time-consuming ‘research’. Parents then attempt to navigate multiple and conflicting ‘risks’: the risk of vaccine-preventable diseases, risks associated with vaccination and risks associated with their own perceived lack of understanding. After engaging with risk, parents justify the decision and accept the associated ‘responsibility’. Parents use this sense of responsibility to navigate through the ‘responses’ of others, which we conceptualise as the risk of unwelcome consequences. In conclusion, parents have a reflexive understanding of the physical, psychological and socio-economic risks they incur as a consequence of their choice to either partially vaccinate, delay vaccination or reject vaccination for their children. They construct these risks with reference to particular discourses, engagement with expert opinion and lifestyle choices emblematic of late modernity. The risks they are willing to accept and the subsequent responsibility and blame they assume when choosing to abstain, or partially abstain, from vaccinating their children are, to the parents, coherent with their interpretation of best parenting practice.     

Controllers’ use of informational tactics

Controllers typically have a ‘dual accountability’ towards the finance function and operational management, respectively. This dual accountability at times confronts them with conflicting expectations. In this paper, we suggest that ‘informational tactics’ constitute an important resource which controllers rely on so as to handle these expectations and to successfully present themselves vis-à-vis their different internal stakeholders. Drawing upon interview data, we demonstrate that informational tactics relate to different dimensions of information control (i.e. ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘what’ information is to be exchanged) and that they depend on the respective room for manoeuvre a controller has in a given situation. Overall, our analysis adds a more nuanced picture to the literature on controllers’ handling of information and demonstrates the fundamental role of informational tactics for their everyday work.     

Managing wealth: A new approach

This paper investigates how well ‘mid-worth’ individuals are served by the financial services industry in the UK. It defines and analyses the new phenomenon of ‘mid-worth’ individuals: the rapid growth in the number of people with significant liquid assets available for investment. It then considers how well these individuals are served by the most common investment products and concludes that most individuals are so poorly served that the result is seriously damaging to their long-term financial health. The paper investigates the main reasons for this: a lack of understanding of the relationship between risk and return, and what can only be described as a conspiracy of ‘mystification’, resulting in customers standing even less chance of understanding the risk-return relationship. The consequence of this is that investors end up paying far too much for ‘heavily packaged’ investment products with the result that they may find they have much less money available to them when they need it most—in old age. The research for this paper was sponsored by Close Wealth Management.     

The puzzling behavior of short sellers around earnings announcements

We examine the performance of ‘predictive’ and ‘reactive’ short sellers who take relatively large short positions immediately before and after quarterly earnings announcements, respectively. While both types short into advancing markets, it is surprising for reactive shorts since their trades are in stocks that just announced unexpected good news and thus, according to the post-earnings announcement drift anomaly, will subsequently have abnormally high cumulative returns. Nevertheless, we find that for both types of short sellers: (1) subsequent cumulative returns are significantly negatively related to the amount of abnormal short selling, suggesting they are informed, and (2) relative to non-earnings dates, the subsequent returns around earnings announcements are significantly more negative, indicating they appear to be adept at exploiting earnings announcements. Surprisingly, we find that the subsequent returns of reactive short sellers are significantly greater than those of predictive short sellers except for S&P 500 stocks, perhaps due to their greater analyst following. Importantly, we are left with two puzzles. First, reactive shorts would have significantly improved their performance had they based their trades on the size of standardized unexpected earnings (‘SUE’). Second, predictive shorts of Micro stocks would have significantly improved their performance had they simply waited until earnings were announced and then based their trades on SUE.     

The ‘ladder of success’ in healthcare: the UK national reference costing index

Relative performance evaluation (RPE) is a form of benchmarking that operates through ranking institutions in comparative league tables. This paper explores issues raised by the introduction of RPE to benchmark UK hospital costs (termed ‘reference’ costs for this purpose). These reference costs are aggregated into a comparative cost index—thereby creating a ‘ladder of success’.The ‘ladder of success’ has the potentiality both to enhance the purchasing role and to provide a comparative database for hospitals to improve their performances. Yet this research found that several problems confound its use for benchmarking: the absence of a referent (or standard) against which ‘reference’ costs can be compared; the non-comparability of many hospitals featuring in the index; and the lack of standardisation in costing practices.In terms of refining and developing the index to enhance its usefulness, there are several possibilities: distinguishing between direct and indirect costs; introducing benchmarking ‘cluster groups’; pinpointing an acceptable range of target costs; and reducing the scope of clinical activities included. However, if any of these alternatives were adopted, the power of a single comprehensive measure that attaches one—and only one—number to each trust would be lost. The issue is that in making the index more meaningful, political leverage over the UK trusts would be reduced. Hence, despite all its associated problems, this research concludes that the ‘ladder of success’ looks likely to continue in its present form.     

Independent and joint effects of audit partner tenure and non-audit fees on audit quality

We examine the individual and joint effects of auditors’ non-audit services (NAS)/abnormal NAS fees and length of audit partner tenure on audit quality. Our results raise questions about the ‘one size fits all’ approach imposed by the current audit partner rotation requirement in Australia as a result of (1) a learning differentiation that we observe between Big 4 and non-Big 4 auditors and (2) higher discretionary accruals associated with non-Big 4 auditors. We find abnormal NAS fees to have a positive association with both absolute and positive (income-increasing) values of discretionary accruals for firms with short audit partner tenure. NAS/abnormal NAS fees are also negatively associated with the issuance of going concern opinions to financially distressed firms when partner tenure is short. In terms of policy implications, regulators are able to gauge the efficacy of the CLERP 9 reforms which currently impose a five year mandatory audit partner rotation requirement.     

Fair value accounting and the present value fallacy: The need for an alternative conceptual framework

The major functions of company accounting identified by the IASB and the FASB are (1) reporting on ‘the custody and safekeeping’ of the company's resources and (2) reporting on ‘their efficient and profitable use’. The joint IASB/FASB project for improving the conceptual framework for financial reporting is directed towards better performance of both functions within the conventional ‘accrual’ system of accounting through the use of ‘fair value’. Although the disclosure of fair values is a development to be welcomed, the requirement that changes in fair value should be reported as ‘gains’ or ‘losses’ appears to rely on the ‘Hicksian’ concept of income as a theoretical ideal.The object of the present paper is to establish that this concept is fundamentally flawed by what may be called the ‘present value fallacy’. Even in an economic utopia of perfectly competitive markets (with no discrepancies between objective market values and subjective present values), the concept of income or profit as value growth can be seriously misleading.If the prevailing Hicksian conceptual framework is discarded in favour of an alternative based on Fisher's theory of income, the two major, but incompatible, functions of financial reporting can be carried out independently and without compromise. The conventional ‘hybrid’ system of accrual accounting, in which backward-looking measures of volume and forward-looking measures of value are mixed together, would be replaced by a ‘segregated’ system in which they are kept strictly apart. A logical extension of Fisher's theory suggests the disclosure by agent/managers of the return on investment that they are planning to deliver to their principal/owners. This type of ‘decision-useful information’ is vital for the efficient operation of capital markets and for removing the accounting incentive to short-termism.