货币政策目标规则的研究现状及评述

货币政策规则研究的进展是近年来货币政策研究的重要突破。本文对货币政策目标规则研究领域的代表性文献进行了系统的分类梳理和总结,并展望国际上相关研究的发展方向,作为我们进一步研究的基础和借鉴。借鉴西方货币政策规则的理论和实践,建立适应新形势的货币政策框架是我国货币政策的发展方向。对中国货币政策目标规则的研究尚处于刚刚起步阶段,今后的相关研究应更多地考虑中国作为新兴市场和转轨国家的经济和金融特征。     

我国应对数字服务税的内在困境与破解之道

实体经济向数字经济的转换,突破了传统税收征管实体联结度规则“壁垒”.税法领域的相关法律缺失,已不能有效解决数字经济时代线上线下税收不公的法律问题.面对数字服务领域的税收问题,世界各国采取的办法或是开征数字服务税,或是修改国内法律,又或是等待国际统一规则的制定.开征数字税的国家在纳税起征条件、税率、征税对象、“安全港”条...     

The impact of national GAAP and accounting traditions on IFRS policy selection: Evidence from Germany and the UK

The adoption of IFRS in the European Union in 2005 aimed to increase the comparability of publicly traded companies’ consolidated accounts. However, previous literature questions whether IFRS are applied consistently across countries with differing institutional environments, and therefore, whether de facto harmony has been achieved. We further examine this question by investigating IFRS accounting policy choices of listed companies in Germany and the UK between 2005 and 2009. We find that most firms, when choosing IFRS options, tend to retain accounting policies required by national rules. We also investigate national accounting traditions in the case of options under national GAAP and find that most companies continue these after adopting IFRS. Moreover, there appears to be little significant change in accounting choices over time from 2005 to 2009. Given the differences in accounting rules and practices that exist across countries, our results suggest that international differences in financial reporting are likely to continue under IFRS.     

Exchange trading rules and stock market liquidity

We examine stock exchange trading rules for market manipulation, insider trading, and broker–agency conflict, across countries and over time, in 42 stock exchanges around the world. Some stock exchanges have extremely detailed rules that explicitly prohibit specific manipulative practices, but others use less precise and broadly framed rules. We create new indices for market manipulation, insider trading, and broker–agency conflict based on the specific provisions in the trading rules of each stock exchange. We show that differences in exchange trading rules, over time and across markets, significantly affect liquidity.     

Fiscal Data Revisions in Europe

Revisions of budget balances in Europe could be particularly worrisome as adherence to multilateral surveillance rules is judged upon initial data releases. We use a pool of real‐time vintages of data for 15 EU countries over the period 1995–2008. Our main findings are: (i) preliminary releases are biased and nonefficient predictors of subsequent releases, (ii) such systematic bias in revisions is a general feature of the sample, (iii) Eurostat's decisions explain a significant share of the bias and provide some evidence of window dressing practices, and (iv) expected real gross domestic product growth, political cycles, and the strength of fiscal rules also contribute to explain revision patterns.     

国际税收协定解释规则新论

税收协定属于双边性国际条约,其解释要遵循国际法上关于条约解释的一般国际法规则和习惯;同时,各国在实践中又形成了自己独具特色的解释规则。各国在解释税收协定时是否适用条约法公约主要与该国是否为公约的签字国、相关税收协定是否在条约法公约生效后缔结、实践中是否区分税收协定与非税收条约的解释等因素有关。但是,各国也必须尊重OECD范本注释、UN范本注释和相互协商协议所体现的共同解释,应当认识到税收协定虽有其特性及特殊规则,但《维也纳条约法公约》仍然适用并应得到广泛的应用。     

A Bidirectional Analysis of Earnings Management and Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moderating Effect of Stakeholder and Investor Protection

The aim of this paper is to analyse the connection and possible bidirectional relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and earnings management (EM). Furthermore, we identify the institutional factors moderating these relationships, such as stakeholder and investor protection. The use of the generalised method of moments estimator proposed by Arellano and Bond (1991) for an international sample of 1960 international listed non‐financial companies from 26 countries for the period 2002 to 2010 highlights the existence of an inverse bidirectional relationship between CSR and EM through discretionary accruals. These relationships are especially important in countries where there is significant institutional pressure regarding CSR as a result of their greater stakeholder protection and also in countries with greater investor protection.     

Evolving Connections Between Tax and Financial Reporting in Italy

We analyze the evolution of the relationship between tax and financial reporting in Italy after the mandatory introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in 2005. Italy represents an interesting case study among European countries, with domestic generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) oriented towards creditor protection and characterized by a close connection of financial and tax accounting. Unusually, the adoption of IFRS is compulsory for the unconsolidated financial statements of listed companies, but the process of alignment of domestic GAAP to IFRS, that has affected some countries, has had little effect on Italy. Thus, two accounting systems, IFRS and Italian GAAP, are used for the preparation of unconsolidated financial statements by different categories of companies and, as a consequence, two different linkages between tax and financial reporting emerge. In order to assess the degree and the direction of the book-tax linkages we use the methodology developed by Lamb, Nobes and Roberts (1998. International variations in the connections between tax and financial reporting, Accounting and Business Research, 28(3), pp. 173–188). IFRS and tax reporting show a high degree of disconnection, while Italian GAAP, in line with the accounting tradition of most continental European countries, are closely related to tax rules. The analysis points out a rapidly evolving situation, with links between accounting systems and taxation becoming tighter, mainly because of the changes in tax law introduced during the last few years.     

IFRS Practices and the Persistence of Accounting System Classification

The earliest paper on international classification of accounting systems is one hundred years old. For about fifteen years from the late 1960s, many papers on the subject were published. One feature of several of the classifications was the dichotomous split of countries into Anglo and continental European. This has been extensively debated. This paper prepares a classification based on the accounting policy choices made by the largest listed companies of eight countries in 2008/9. All the companies were using the same reporting rules, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). This classification by IFRS practices shows the same two groups as a classification of national practices drawn up in 1980, despite 30 years of harmonization. None of the classifications above or the more recent ones was based on the actual accounting practices of companies in annual reports. This has several disadvantages, as the paper investigates. This paper's classification is the first to be based on accounting practices, as well as being the first in the IFRS era. The paper also investigates the implications of the persistent differences in practices for assessing the success of the IASB's whole project on improving comparability of financial statements.     

Watchdogs,helpers or protectors? – Internal auditing in Malaysian Local Government

This paper examines internal auditor roles to support public governance in a developing country context, through interviews with chief audit executives across 17 Malaysian Local Government Authorities. Drawing on critical theory, the research shows that internal auditors seek to legitimise their position through compliance (watchdog) and performance (helper and protector) audits. At the micro level of practices, in performing these dual roles, internal auditors are not colonised by governance rules and managerial influence, but instead are enabled by them to perform communicative action. Nevertheless, this was undermined by financial and managerial capacity issues that are a challenge in developing countries.     

Accounting practice,fiscal decentralization and corruption

In prior studies, accounting and decentralization corruption solutions have so far been analysed in isolation. In this article, we connect these two strands of literature on corruption. Understanding this connection is important because weak financial accounting and reporting systems can inhibit monitoring incentives and thus reduce decentralization benefits in countering corruption. We argue that the effectiveness of decentralization as an anti-corruption barrier is complemented by the quality of the accounting practice in a country. Using multiple sources of data, we find that decentralization has a positive and increasing effect on reducing corruption among countries with a high-quality accounting practice. In contrast, decentralization has a negative and decreasing effect on reducing corruption among countries with weak-quality accounting practices. These findings are robust to alternative measures of accounting, decentralization and corruption and to endogeneity tests. Our findings demonstrate the crucial information role of accounting in enhancing decentralization monitoring mechanisms and in thereby reducing corruption.     

Do organizations adopt sophisticated capital budgeting practices to deal with uncertainty in the investment decision?: A research note

This study examines the impact of uncertainty on the sophistication of capital budgeting practices. While the theoretical applications of sophisticated capital budgeting practices (defined as the use of real option reasoning and/or game theory decision rules) have been well documented, empirical evidence on the factors that affect the importance and use of these sophisticated capital budgeting practices is scarce. I investigate the relation between specific uncertainties and sophisticated capital budgeting practices in 189 Dutch organizations. The empirical results show that sophisticated capital budgeting involves the use of multiple tools and procedures (such as Monte Carlo simulations, certainty equivalents, Game Theory decision rules and Real Option Reasoning). An increase in financial uncertainty is associated with the use and importance of sophisticated capital budgeting practices. Finally, size and industry are also related to the use and importance of sophisticated capital budgeting practices.     

Toward Transparency: New Approaches and Their Application to Financial Markets

The Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s not only highlightedthe welfare consequences of transparency in the financial sectorbut also linked this relatively narrow problem to the broadercontext of transparency in governance. It has been observedthat objections to transparency, often on flimsy pretexts, arecommon even in industrialized countries. This article arguesthat transparency is indispensable to the financial sector anddescribes its desirable characteristics: access, timeliness,relevance, and quality. The authors emphasize the need to weighthe costs and benefits of a more transparent regulatory policy,and they explore the connection between information imperfections,macroeconomic policy, and questions of risk. The article arguesfor developing institutional infrastructure, standards, andaccounting practices that promote transparency, implementingincentives for disclosure and establishing regulations to minimizethe perverse incentives generated by safety net arrangements,such as deposit insurance. Because institutional developmentis gradual, the authors contend that relatively simple regulations,such as limits on credit expansion, may be the most reasonableoption for developing countries. They show that transparencyhas absolute limits because of the lack of adequate enforcementand argue that adequate enforcement may be predicated on broaderreforms in the public sector.      

THE DIVERSITY OF ACCRUAL POLICIES IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT FINANCIAL REPORTING: AN EXAMINATION OF INFRASTRUCTURE,ART AND HERITAGE ASSETS IN GERMANY,ITALY AND THE UK

This paper examines the norms and practices for infrastructure, art and heritage assets in six cities, across three European countries, to determine how the national norms of accrual accounting compared with each other, and with IPSAS, and how the practices in each city compared with the norms. We identify significant diversity between actual practices and the norms imposed by national policy‐makers or set by IPSAS. Given that a longstanding concern of the literature has been on whether these kinds of assets should be included in governmental balance sheets and operating statements at all, it is striking how often the question was settled in practice by excluding art and heritage assets, even when this meant non‐compliance with national norms. In our three countries, it is clear that comparability of the financial statements between countries was not a concern of policy‐makers, and comparability between cities within each country not a concern of preparers.     

Exchange rate predictability in a changing world

An expanding literature articulates the view that Taylor rules are helpful in predicting exchange rates. In a changing world, however, Taylor rule parameters may be subject to structural instabilities, for example in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. This paper forecasts exchange rates using Taylor rules with Time-Varying Parameters (TVP) estimated by Bayesian methods. Focusing on the data from the crisis, we improve upon the random walk for at least half, and for as many as seven out of 10, of the currencies considered. Results are stronger when we allow the TVP of the Taylor rules to differ between countries.     

Shariah governance in Islamic banks: Practices,practitioners and praxis

This study examines Shariah governance in Islamic banks by analyzing and comparing international and national Shariah governance codes across 11 countries and the annual reports of the largest stand-alone Islamic bank in each of these countries. Drawing upon the practice theory framework, this study identifies the similarities and differences across countries in Shariah governance practices, practitioners, and praxis. Regarding practices, we found that the 11 countries reviewed have adopted different approaches, i.e., strict, moderate, or flexible approaches, in developing regulations for Shariah governance structures and processes. The approach taken by each country, in turn, influences Shariah governance practitioners and praxis at the institutional level to some extent. Specifically, Islamic banks in countries belonging to the moderate and flexible groups are likely to be more varied in terms of Shariah governance practitioners as well as praxis (activities or processes) to ensure Shariah compliance as compared to their counterparts in countries with strict regulations. Analyzing current Shariah governance practices in these 11 countries can promote a greater understanding and resolution in addressing critical issues due to different contextual circumstances. Therefore, the findings of this study can provide relevant information for both regulators and practitioners to further improve the Shariah governance best practices in the Islamic banking industry.     

Private Control Benefits and Earnings Management: Evidence from Insider Controlled Firms

We examine earnings management practices of insider controlled firms across 22 countries to shed light on the link between consumption of private benefits and earnings management. Insider controlled firms are associated with more earnings management than noninsider controlled firms in weak investor protection countries. Consistent with the private benefits motive, insider controlled firms with greater divergence between cash‐flow rights and control rights are associated with more earnings management in these countries. Growth opportunities attenuate the association between insider control and earnings management even in weak investor protection countries. We also find some weak evidence that insider controlled firms are associated with less earnings management in strong investor protection countries. Overall, our results highlight a strong link between private benefits consumption and earnings management.     

Examining Management Accounting Change as Rules and Routines: The Effect of Rule Precision

This study examines change in management accounting practices as change in rules and routines. Informed by the institutional theory‐inspired framework of Burns and Scapens (2000) , the rules and routines relating to capital expenditure controls in a capital‐intensive organisation are analysed. We explain how preciseness of rules affects not only the coupling of rules to routines, but also the emergence of multiple routines, enhancing the understanding of how management accounting practices remain stable and/or change over time. These results extend and refine recent research relating to management accounting change and offer new empirical insights into practice.     

Die vorvertragliche Anzeigepflicht: Empfehlungen für ein europäisches Versicherungsvertragsrecht

In all European legal systems, the pre-contractual duty of disclosure is the most fundamental duty of the insured. Therefore, it is also the focal point of the debate about the harmonization of insurance contract law in Europe. As this discussion has recently gained momentum, this contribution provides a comparative overview of the rules regulating the duty of disclosure in different European countries and submits recommendations for its design in a European insurance contract law. More specifically, it is recommended that the insured should be required to disclose any fact material to the risk, that is either known to him or that he can be assumed to know. In case of breach, the insurer should either be entitled to repudiate the contract ab initio, to cancel the contract for the future or to claim damages depending on whether and to what degree the insured is at fault and depending on whether there is a causal connection between the non-disclosed fact and the formation of the contract or the occurrence of the insured event.