A comparative analysis of the construct validity of coefficients in paramorphic models of accounting judgments: A replication and extension

This study adds to research which examines the construct validity of coefficients of cue importance in studies concerned with how decision-makers use accounting information in formulating judgments (see Larcker & Lessig, The Accounting Review, January, 1983, pp. 58–77; Selling & Shank, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 1989, pp. 65–77). Historically, accounting studies have modelled cue importance with almost exclusive reliance upon linear models. But as the Selling & Shank study indicates, inferring the importance of accounting cues through reliance upon only one kind of model can leave “method variance” undetected and raises threats to the construct validity of coefficients (see Cook & Campbell, Quasi-experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings, 1979, pp. 59–70). To the extent that cue importance appears similar across models, then the model coefficients are presumed more valid. While Selling & Shank compare linear models to process tracing models, we compare a linear model to an eigenvector-scaling routine known as the Analytic Hierarchy Process (see Saaty, The Analytic Hierarchy Process, 1980). As with Selling & Shank, we find that the importance of cues is sensitive to model choice, suggesting that more research is needed into method variance before judgments can be made with respect to the construct validity of linear coefficients in accounting studies.     

Self-insight into the cognitive processing of financial information

An experimental setting was formulated where individuals processed financial information and provided estimates of changes in security prices. The ability of subjects to express accurate subjective cue weights was assessed by comparing the subjective weights with objective (statistical) cue weights based on their judgments. The results indicate an encouraging degree of insight, especially when the results are compared with previous studies in psychology, since this group of users of accounting information were able to express indications of relative cue importance which reflected the way they were using the information.     

Auditor specialization,accounting information quality and investment efficiency

This study is examined how the auditor specialization moderates the effect of accounting information quality on investment efficiency, i.e., whether the effect of accounting information quality on investment efficiency is increasing or decreasing with the presence of the specialist auditor.The reached result reveals that the accounting information quality appears to help decrease the overinvestment problem. Similarly, the auditor specialization has been discovered to help greatly in improving investment efficiency, while reducing the underinvestment problem. We further find that the accounting information quality and the auditor specialization are two mechanisms with some degree of substitution in enhancing investment efficiency. The accounting information quality is positively associated with investment efficiency for firms whose auditor is an industry specialist.In addition, to check the robustness of the main results, this paper investigates the causal relationships between investment efficiency, auditor specialization and accounting information quality from the dynamic simultaneous-equation models.     

资源流成本会计控制决策模式研究——以日本田边公司为例

资源流转成本会计是会计学界为解决资源约束和环境污染问题提出的一种新的成本管理会计核算方法。它通过对企业各个环节的资源流转进行追踪核算,可以促进企业减少资源消耗,降低成本,实现经济效益和环境效益的协调发展。本文在总结其核算基本原理和方法的基础上,比较分析了资源流转成本核算的优势,以日本田边公司为例重点剖析了资源流成本会计的控制决策模式,旨在为企业实施经济、环境和社会协同共生的三赢管理模式提供方法借鉴,促进我国低碳经济的发展。     

商业银行构建矩阵式财务管理应用平台的探讨

经营模式与增长方式转变推动国内商业银行日益重视建设管理会计平台以获取决策信息。近几年国内商业银行所致力于提炼的均为客户或产品的产出信息,而在处理客户或产品的投入信息方面,至今尚无一家银行取得重大进展。本文提出国内商业银行有必要通过构建核算与管理一体化的矩阵式财务管理应用平台,来解决自身投入信息匮乏的难题。在第一阶段,国内商业银行应构建分业务线的经营管理体制,集约化的矩阵式财务管理,精细化的核算流程,完善实物财产管理,依托流程控制和严格的执行力,与资源配置挂钩并依托强大的技术架构支撑;在第二阶段,将战略成本管理作为长远目标。     

商业银行构建矩阵式财务管理应用平台的探讨

经营模式与增长方式转变推动国内商业银行日益重视建设管理会计平台以获取决策信息。近几年国内商业银行所致力于提炼的均为客户或产品的产出信息，而在处理客户或产品的投入信息方面，至今尚无一家银行取得重大进展。本文提出国内商业银行有必要通过构建核算与管理一体化的矩阵式财务管理应用平台，来解决自身投入信息匮乏的难题。在第一阶段，国内商业银行应构建分业务线的经营管理体制，集约化的矩阵式财务管理，精细化的核算流程，完善实物财产管理，依托流程控制和严格的执行力，与资源配置挂钩并依托强大的技术架构支撑；在第二阶段，将战略成本管理作为长远目标。     

银行信贷中会计信息的使用情况调查与分析

贷款人对企业财务信息的关注不只是会计信息决策有用性的理论问题, 更重要的是银行如何加强对贷款风险有效控制的一个非常实际的问题。本项工作通过问卷调查的方式, 了解银行授信过程中会计信息的应用情况及银行对非财务信息的使用情况。我们发现, 银行对长短期借款、主营业务收入、资产负债率、流动比率和速动比率等财务信息高度重视, 对有助于进一步判别企业潜在风险的报表附注信息也比较重视。     

The validity of management accounting language games – A pragmatic constructive perspective

To support the development of a pragmatic practice-based theory for management accounting, practice theory offers valuable avenues for understanding the development, role, and effects of tools and techniques used by practitioners. Scholars have identified communication as a critical dimension for analysis, as discourse can govern the production of knowledge and power structures. However, previous research has mainly focused on the role of actors within static environments; how actors justify their actions and goals, compared with other actors; and how they are aligned with or justify new practices relative to existing practices. The pragmatic constructivist framework that underpins this special issue builds on this research but recognises that previous research has paid little attention to how people—when interacting within a dynamic environment—develop and create new types of constructive causality. Importantly, the necessary conditions for people's actions to construct what they intend to remain largely unexplored. Pragmatic constructivism is founded on the recognition that any theory of management accounting must include conceptual devices representing the notion of success, as well as techniques for evaluating the truth aptness of local practices of reality construction, such as those represented by managemen accounting. This special issue aims to theoretically and empirically explore the potential in management accounting for the measurement and governance of constructed causality. The central topic is the role of management accounting in supporting individual and collective actors to effectively construct causal chains that make organisations work. The three articles in this special issue adopt different approaches to combining the pragmatic constructivist framework with additional theoretical frameworks, as well as using different research methodologies. The papers' findings point to the importance of co-authorship in the creation of functioning organisational practices, and suggest that this might be threatened by information technology. Co-authorship involves language games in the form of dialogical interaction between the accountants and other involved actors. This process develops a shared understanding anchored in a fusion of conceptual models that is tied to individual collaborators' local practice.     

The effect of information load on decision makers' cue utilization levels and decision quality in a financial distress decision task

Seventeen practising auditors and sixty-seven accounting students participated in a decision making experiment that examined the effect of increasing amounts of accounting information on cue usage and decision quality. Each participant made financial distress decisions under three levels of information load. Approximately one-third of those participating apparently experienced information overload and exhibited an inverted-U relationship between information usage and information load; the others exhibited patterns of increasing cue usage. The individuals who apparently experienced information overload also reached decisions of lesser quality, as indicated by significantly lower decision making consistency, lesser agreement with a composite judge, and lower consensus.     

Accounting and budgeting systems: The issue of congruency

The importance of designing an accounting system that is congruent with an organization's budgeting system has been noted in the literature. Unfortunately, in many government organization it is common to find incompatible budgeting and accounting systems. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether gearing the accounting information system to a zero-base budgeting system increases the perceived usefulness of the budgeting process. This issue is examined under conditions of both scare and abundant resources. Based on an empirical study, it is shown that the usefulness of a budgeting system to budget recipients may indeed be dependent on the accounting information system, conditioned on the availability of resources. Given the relationship between budgeting and public policy, implications of the study for the public policy making process are discussed.     

QUANTITATIVE NON-FINANCIAL INFORMATION AND INCOME MEASURES: THE CASE OF LONG TERM CONTRACTS

Much available numerical information is non-financial. This information has the advantages of quantifying events that cannot be expressed in financial terms, timeliness and the avoidance of accounting procedures. This paper investigates the usefulness of quantitative non-financial information (QNFI) as a proxy for current and future economic and accounting income. The study analyses a hypothetical firm which undertakes long term contracts. A mathematical model is constructed of the cash generation process of the company. QNFI measures are found to dominate accounting measures with regard to estimating economic income and predicting both economic and accounting income. These results are confirmed by a stochastic simulation model which allows for a more complex model.     

Exponential utility maximization under partial information

We consider the exponential utility maximization problem under partial information. The underlying asset price process follows a continuous semimartingale and strategies have to be constructed when only part of the information in the market is available. We show that this problem is equivalent to a new exponential optimization problem which is formulated in terms of observable processes. We prove that the value process of the reduced problem is the unique solution of a backward stochastic differential equation (BSDE) which characterizes the optimal strategy. We examine two particular cases of diffusion market models for which an explicit solution has been provided. Finally, we study the issue of sufficiency of partial information.     

公司治理中的会计角色

近年来 ,上市公司的治理成为企业改革的又一个热点话题 ,其中 ,财务信息失真问题引起社会愈来愈多的关注 ,会计也成为人们非议的焦点。本文要厘清的是会计在公司治理中真正的角色和地位是什么 ,以便正确发挥会计在公司治理中的作用。本文认为 ,会计在公司治理中所扮演的角色为 :一方面 ,财务会计和审计作为一个信息系统 ,在减少信息的不对称方面起着重要的作用 ;另一方面 ,管理会计与内部审计为监督合约条款的实施 ,保障合约的有效运行也发挥着重要的作用。     

Symmetric and asymmetric nonlinear causalities between oil prices and the U.S. economic sectors

This study investigates the causal dynamics of the U.S. sector price changes and oil price changes using the symmetric nonlinear and asymmetric nonlinear causality tests. We find a unidirectional causality from each sector to the oil market using the Granger and MWald linear causality tests. However, the symmetric nonlinear and asymmetric nonlinear causality for negative price changes tests yield unidirectional causality from the oil to the sector price changes which sharply contrast the evidence using the linear models. We find bidirectional causality using the asymmetric nonlinear test for positive price changes, suggesting temporal, dual and nonlinear information flow during bull markets. Our results from the nonlinear and asymmetric causality tests remain robust after accounting for structural breaks. The empirical findings unravel nonlinear interactions between sector price and oil price changes as well as the importance of signs of changes in the interacting variables, implying oil returns may need to be priced when forecasting sector returns.     

The effect of external reporting on managerial decision making: Some antecedent conditions

Behavioral research in accounting has largely been concerned with examining the effects accounting information has on its recipients. One area which has received little attention despite its potential importance, however, concerns the process by which the behavior of the information sender may be influenced by the act of communicating information to recipients. Within this paper, it is hypothesized that the decision impact of the act of communicating information is conditioned by the extent to which information senders perceive external recipients as relying on financial accounting information and by the cognitive style of the information sender. Results obtained from a questionnaire distributed to corporate managers and to independent auditors provide support for accepting both of these hypotheses. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Tests of a rational expectations-structural neutrality model with persistent effects of monetary disturbances

This paper describes tests of a rational expectations-structural neutrality (RESN) model capable of accounting for the persistent effects of aggregate demand shocks. The model imposes the identifying restriction that only contemporaneous shocks to aggregate demand affect a vector stochastic process of highly cyclic real variables. Tests are performed using a well-known measure of unanticipated monetary change as the demand disturbance. The results suggest that RESN models, observationally inequivalent from Keynesian models, can be constructed in such a way as to account for observable relationships between monetary and real variables.     

从净收益视角看公允价值和历史成本计量属性的作用

论文在决策有用性的会计目标框架下,以权益投资者的企业价值评估为视角,探讨了会计计量属性的选择和应用问题。在资产负债会计体系下,即便采用公允价值计量也无法反映企业的整体经济价值。企业价值需要借助金融模型估计,传统收入费用会计体系下的净收益指标是模型中的关键变量,但资产负债表中公允价值的引入使净收益的计量失去了逻辑一致性。这对权益估价模型的应用造成了干扰,从而损害了财务报告对投资者的有用性。论文认为对投资者提供公允价值信息的最佳方式是单独披露,而不是表内确认。最近FASB为应对金融危机对有关会计准则的修订反映了计量方法多样化的趋势,但计量方法的优势并不取决于该计量方法是否符合计量对象的具体特点,而是是否符合会计系统的整体目标。     

The Relation between Stock Prices and Accounting Information

The functional relation between expected stock prices and accounting information is analyzed through the theory of inverse probability. The approach models the mean of the posterior distribution for price, given the information that the accounting process provides. The implications of alternative assumptions about accounting measurement error and the unconditional price distribution are discussed. Our most refined model is consistent with recent empirical evidence showing convexity in the relationship between price and accounting information. Empirical tests, while exploratory, provide further evidence of a nonlinear relation between stock price and accounting measures of earnings and book value.