The probability evaluation game: an instrument to highlight the skill of reflexive listening

This paper describes the development of the Probability Evaluation Game (PEG): an innovative teaching instrument that emphasises the sophistication of listening and highlights listening as a key skill for accounting practitioners. Whilst in a roundtable format, playing PEG involves participants individually evaluating a series of probability terms and then calling out their evaluations amongst fellow players who have done the same. When listening to peers’ responses, any difference in evaluation of the same term confronts players with the knowledge that without skilled, reflexive listening conversations are dangerous playgrounds of miscommunication. The PEG presents a valuable learning opportunity where the potential impact of this issue for accounting and business world can be discussed. This paper details how PEG was developed, its format and how it has been used with students and accounting practitioners. Furthermore emergent, and often intriguing, learning points are discussed and related to accounting and the workplace more generally.     

Exact solutions for ruin probability in the presence of an absorbing upper barrier

Abstract

An explicit solution for the probability of ruin in the presence of an absorbing upper barrier was developed by Segerdahl (1970) for the particular case in which both the interoccurrence times between successive claims and the single claim amounts follow an exponential distribution with unit mean. In this paper we show that his method of solution may be extended to produce explicit solutions for two more general types of single claim amount distribution. These are the gamma distribution, denoted γ(a), where a is an integer, and the mixed exponential distribution. Comparisons are drawn between this approach when the upper barrier tends to infinity, and the classical solution for ruin probability in these particular cases given in Cramér (1955).     

The contract,accounting and trust: A case study of an international joint venture (IJV) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

This paper reports on the results of a case study that examines the effect of the contract and accounting on inter-organisational trust in an international joint venture (IJV). The empirical setting of the research was an IJV relation between a United Arab Emirates (UAE) firm and its western partner. Data were gathered from multiple sources, including documents, observations, interviews and discussions with managers. The paper aims to explore the process of trust development and the role of the contract and accounting in this. We find that trust developed differently for the partners. Moreover the trust concerns of the partners were not the same. Based on this we conclude that trust was not automatically reciprocated. Instead it needs relating to other items such as the contract, accounting and also the institutional environment. The open-book accounting we observed could only be termed ‘partial’ because the western partner had access to the local partner's books but not the vice versa. But this partial open-book accounting created conflicts between the partners. We argue that developing one kind of trust through one particular medium may help one party but may damage the relationship between the partners.     

Policy uncertainty,the use of derivatives: Evidence from U.S. bank holdingcompanies (BHCs)

We explore the link between bank holding companies’ hedging in derivatives and economic policy uncertainty using a newspaper-based index of policy uncertainty. Interestingly, we find that bank holding companies use derivatives less intensively in states where policy uncertainty is high (they hedge against homogenous (tradable) risk only); instead, they allocate their risk exposure via lending (thus increasing their credit risk). This finding is robust to different combinations of data samples, including the usage of only fourth quarter data, annual data, excluding bank mergers and acquisitions, and the results are robust to sample selection.     

美国《金融服务现代化法》隐私条款述评及启示

美国1999年颁布的《金融服务现代化法》第五章中设立了有关保护客户隐私的条款,尽管美国国内的金融机构和消费者对此条款质疑不断,但对我国仍具有借鉴意义。