Discussion of ‘Making Deferred Taxes Relevant’

Abstract

In this discussion of Brouwer and Naarding's article ‘Making Deferred Taxes Relevant’, which is published in this issue of Accounting in Europe, I question several aspects of their proposal to change the tax accounting standard. I argue that a quest for more value relevance of individual balance sheet items is not a good guideline for accounting standard setting. The distinction between book-first and tax-first temporary differences may be helpful for some analytical purposes, but it is not sufficiently robust to serve as a basis for an accounting standard. However, I agree with the authors that the efforts to improve IAS 12 should not be abandoned.     

Devolved Government and Transport—Relationships,Process and Policy

This article explores the change in relationships taking place between the National Assembly for Wales and UK government. The context for this is the rationale, constituent elements and timespan of an integrated transport policy for Wales, and the author draws on evidence to, and reports from, the House of Commons, the National Assembly, the Wales Office and the report of the Richard Commission on the Assembly's powers. Wales can be seen as a case study of how devolution, and the development of transport policy in a devolved context, have progressed; it is argued that the principles apply to other devolved governments in the UK and elected assemblies.     

NHS Inquiries: A Time Series Analysis

This article provides a time series analysis of NHS public inquiries and inquiries related to health against the background of recent policy changes which are centralizing hazardous incident investigations within agencies such as the Healthcare Commission.     

New development: Implementing and evaluating government strategic plans—the Europe 2020 Strategy

ABSTRACT

This article examines the implementation of the Europe 2020 Strategy. The authors analysed the strategic and management plans of the European Commission’s directorates-general (DGs) to identify the main and dominant discourses in the documents. The supplementing or supplanting of the simple strategy framework of the early years by a political framework after 2014 can be seen as caused by an interaction between rational management evaluation on one hand and political values and will on the other.     

Three bags full,minister: How the London electricity board fixed tariffs for 1984/85

Not before time, the Government have been thinking how to restructure relations with the nationalised industries. A Treasury consultation paper (see also page 8) suggests that, among other measures, the Government are seeking to make board chairmen and members more ‘accountable’ ‐ in practice, more ‘sackable’ ‐ than at present. The following account of how one board reacted to a Treasury‐imposed policy decision ‐ the raising of electricity tariffs from 1 April 1984 ‐suggests that, if anything, boards need to be given greater, not less, protection against political interference.

Unhappy at the way the London Electricity Board agreed to the 2 per cent rise, the London Electricity Consultative Council, as was its right under the Electricity Act 1947, protested to the Electricity Council. This account is a summary of the evidence submitted by the Consultative Council at a formal hearing before the Electricity Council on 25 April 1984. It was given to us by Alex Henney, who was at the time chairman of the Consultative Council and ex‐officio member of the London Electricity Board. Later in the year, the Minister for Consumer Affairs declined to renew Henney's appointment as chairman of the Consultative Council, and refused to give reasons.

For further background to the tariff increase and the way in which it was imposed upon an unwilling industry, see Public Money, June 1984 page 41, and Anthony Harrison's article in Public Money, December 1984, and particularly pages 44–45.     

Coping with Suicide Attacks: Lessons from Israel

This article describes research on the challenges that suicide attacks and other mass casualty attacks have posed to policy-makers and first responders in Israel. The authors describe a model of response to attacks which focuses on defensive responses to terrorism: prevention, crisis management and reconstruction. The authors draw out the lessons for other countries and discuss the problems that still need to be addressed in order to cope effectively with current and future terrorist attacks.     

Regulation and quality in monopoly industries

Regulating the privatised utilities has turned out to be more difficult than was expected, and the regulation that will be imposed on the water and electricity industries is likely to be different to that which the Government imposed on the telecommunications industry. By looking at the quality of British Telecom's services, some insights can be gained into why regulation has turned out to be so complex, and where the UK regulatory model may be heading.     

Strategies for Dividend Distribution: A Review

Abstract

In today’s world of financial uncertainty, one major public concern is to assess (and possibly improve) the stability of companies that take on risks. Actuaries have been aware of that issue for a very long time and have a great experience in modeling the activity of a risk business. During the first part of the twentieth century, they focused on the probability of ruin to assess the stability of their company. In his seminal paper of 1957 Bruno de Finetti criticized this approach and laid the foundations of what would become an increasingly popular topic: the study of dividend strategies. The contributions made by actuaries in that field constitute a substantial body of knowledge, whose interest is relevant not only to insurance but also to a much broader range of areas of practice. In this paper we aim at a taxonomical synthesis of the 50 years of actuarial research that followed de Finetti’s original paper.     

Public service and private gain

The Department of Education &; Science recently published details of the type of financial delegation schemes which schools will have to submit by September 1989. Together with other elements in the Education Reform Act, it is clear that delegation will give considerable scope to headteachers with the requisite abilities and attitudes to develop as general managers, and so create distinctive institutions which reflect their vision of what constitutes a good school.     

The contracting out of legal services within the public sector

From 1979, successive Conservative governments were determined to introduce private sector management approaches into the delivery of public services. This article reviews the managerial and structural changes since 1979 and proposes an initial typology through which to interpret them. The article concludes by raising issues concerning how far these changes have reflected or diluted the Government's policy objectives and how far the changes have been to the benefit of the various stakeholders involved in the provision of public services.     

Sustainable global futures: Common interest,interdependency, complexity and global possibilities

The aim of this article is to present a comparative analytical review of three major futures reports that have been published recently: The Global Possible (1985) and its executive summary, World Enough and Time: Successful Strategies jot Resource Management (1985); the Club of Rome report, Managing Global Issues: Reasons for Encouragement (1985); and the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtl and Commission) report, Our Common Future (1987).¹ These documents are the latest in a long line of global reports going back to the Club of Rome's 1970 Limits to Growth publication. They bring together in new juxtapositions extensions and/or modifications of concepts and ideas which, to a large extent, were first formulated in the pre-1983–1984 reports. These earlier reports failed by and large to influence the status quo in the international economic system. The prospects of the new reports acting as catalysts for reform are assessed in this article.     

New training proposals for Northern Ireland

Industrial training, particularly the relatively poor British performance, has received publicity in recent years. The Northern Ireland Department of Economic Development has published a consultative paper with proposals for reforming the Province's training structure. There may be lessons in it for improving the industrial training system elsewhere in the United Kingdom.     

Rail Franchising Matters—The Award of Open Access Rights on the ECML

In March 2006, the Rail Regulator made a controversial decision to award open access rights to a new train operator on the east coast route. A 10-year franchise had been granted to GNER on this route in 2005 on the assumption that there would not be competition from open access operators. This article examines this decision, concluding that it reflects confusion over responsibilities and the government's ambivalent attitude to rail privatization. Alternatives to the current ‘malaise’ are suggested.     

The negative news threshold—An explanation for negative skewness in stock returns

Abstract

A vast literature documents negative skewness in stock index return distributions on several markets. In this paper the issue of negative skewness is approached from a different angle to previous studies by combining the Trueman's 1997 model of management disclosure practices with symmetric market responses in order to explain negative skewness in stock returns. Empirical tests reveal that returns for days when non-scheduled news items are disclosed are the source of negative skewness in stock returns, as predicted. These findings suggest that negative skewness in stock returns is induced by asymmetries in the news disclosure policies of firm management. Furthermore, it is found that the returns are negatively skewed only for non-scheduled firm-specific news disclosures for firms where the management is compensated with stock options.     

Sampling from a population in which some units are duplicated and/or overlap

Abstract

In this article we discuss Sirken's multiplicity sampling along lines developed by Goodman in two earlier notes. Sampling from a list in which some units are duplicated appears as a special case.     

Research Into the Aging Process: A Survey

Abstract

We are in the midst of a revolution in biological knowledge. Although research into the aging process was begun long before the Human Genome Project, it has benefited greatly from the powerful tools and techniques spun off from that endeavor. Current research is providing knowledge about life processes that may offer the prospect of slowing the aging process. Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, has predicted that “By 2030, major genes responsible for the aging process in humans will likely have been identified, and clinical trials with drugs to retard the process may well be getting underway” (Collins 2000). A growing number of scientists recognize extension of the maximum life span as a possibility.

The actuarial profession cannot lay claim to expertise in the area of mortality while ignoring scientific research into the causes of aging. This paper provides a brief overview of the subject and a bibliography for those interested in pursuing the matter further. It offers a brief historical perspective, a survey of current research, and a glimpse of future possibilities.?     

Public—Private Partnerships in Ireland: Policy and Practice

Ireland's National Development Plan 2000–2006 includes a significant programme of public—private partnerships (PPPs). The Irish Government's policy on PPPs has been shaped to ensure that capital investments under PPP are not included when calculating key fiscal aggregates. This article traces the origins of Ireland's PPP programme and outlines the extent of PPP activity to date. It details how the PPP programme has failed to make an impact in terms of addressing Ireland's infrastructure deficit and examines three particular cases where the PPP model has been applied.     

The Rhetoric of Modernization and the Labour Government's Pay Agenda

The modernization agenda is central to New Labour's desire to improve public services and reforming public sector pay is argued to be a fundamental requirement to delivering such improvement. This article argues that both the modernization agenda and pay reform have a rhetorical function. The authors analyse some short extracts of text from the NHS Agenda for Change on pay reform and show that much of the text requires unstated assumptions and premises to be added by the reader to render the arguments of the text to be fully coherent. Reaction to these unstated aspects of the Government's rhetoric are central to whether modernization is approved of or not.     

Institutions and Development: The Case of China in Comparative Perspectives

Abstract:

The limited explanatory power of conventional wisdom in understanding the “China miracle“ calls for theories with more universal appeal. The theories might have been considerably enriched if sufficient credit had been given to China’s contribution to the evolution of the modern state in human history. Using conventional wisdom as a benchmark, we demonstrate that an analytical framework might be developed to accommodate characteristics of Chinese society with its unique history and cultural values. Our preliminary results indicate that it was perhaps the set of values emphasizing personal development and rights to property that have enabled the China miracle experienced over the past three decades. Long-standing issues such as excessive reliance on the state for the provision of public goods and omnipresent government control of resource industries are largely consistent with China’s record of civilization state development during various ancient dynasties.