THE ROLE OF TIME SERIES ANALYSIS IN STUDIES OF ACCOUNTING POLICY CHOICE: A COMMENT

The study by Anderson and Zimmer [1992] of goodwill accounting policies uses a pooled time series experimental design. This approach can add substantially to our understanding of accounting policy choices, but not in the manner used by Anderson and Zimmer. Where accounting policy choices are believed to be independent from one period to the next, then a time series approach can greatly enhance our ability to capture the influence on such policy choices of changing circumstances, more so than a simple cross-sectional test. Conversely, if accounting policy choices are not independent between periods, pooling over time can overstate significance levels of statistical tests. The nature of Anderson and Zimmer's data makes the impact indeterminate. However, even under an extreme assumption, pre-regulation evidence remains significant at conventional levels.     

TIME SERIES ANALYSIS OF ACCOUNTING POLICY CHOICE: REPLY

Taylor (1992) argues that accounting policy choices in any year are not assessed independently of policy choices adopted in previous years. This independence assumption is a maintained hypothesis of Anderson and Zimmer (1992). Although Taylor acknowledges that our results remain robust to his suggested adjustments for non-independence, we argue in this reply that such adjustments are unnecessary because temporal independence of accounting policy choices is consistent with the implications of costly contracting between the firm and its claimholders. We develop the arguments that (1) accounting choices are temporally independent and our research design is therefore, appropriate (2) to the extent that there is an independence problem of the type proposed by Taylor (1992) it also applies to cross-sectional studies of accounting policy choice.     

THE APPLICATION OF INTANGIBLE ASSET ACCOUNTING AND DISCRETIONARY POLICY CHOICES IN THE UK FOOTBALL INDUSTRY

This paper investigates the use of intangible asset accounting and the selection of accounting policies in the football industry, an environment where discretionary choices were available concerning accounting for transfer fees. Additionally, companies in this dynamic and socially influential industry are unique in recognising investments in human resources on the balance sheet. Proxies representing the level of tax costs, equity depletion, underwriter pressure and auditors used are found to have significant associations with policy selection. This contributes to the debate over the role of discretionary choices, particularly regarding the accounting treatment available for intangible assets, in financial reporting.     

CORPORATE DIVIDEND POLICY DETERMINANTS: INTELLIGENT VERSUS A TRADITIONAL APPROACH

Dividend is the return that an investor receives when purchasing a company's shares. The decision to pay these dividends to shareholders concerns several other groups of people, such as financial managers, consulting firms, individual and institutional investors, government and monitoring authorities, and creditors, just to name a few. The prediction and modelling of this decision has received a significant amount of attention in the corporate finance literature. However, the methods used to study the aforementioned question are limited to the logistic regression method without any implementation of the advanced and expert methods of data mining. These methods have proven their superiority in other business‐related fields, such as marketing, production, accounting and auditing. In finance, bankruptcy prediction has the vast majority among data‐mining implementations, but to the best of the authors’ knowledge such an implementation does not exist in dividend payment prediction. This paper satisfies this gap in the literature and provides answers that help to understand the so‐called ‘dividend puzzle’. Specifically, this paper provides evidence supporting the hypothesis that data‐mining methods perform better in accuracy measures against the traditional methods used. The prediction of dividend policy determinants provides valuable benefits to all related parties, as they can manage, invest, consult and monitor the dividend policy in a more effective way. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

战略联盟成本结构与我国银行业战略联盟策略的选择

"战略联盟"这一通过外部化行为降低成本的制度安排,已成为银行业实现效益最大化的竞争手段,其动机旨在联盟过程中追求长期竞争优势,不可避免地会面临相当的不确定性.本文认为,银行在战略上考虑竞争性需求的同时,也应深入分析联盟成本结构及其决定因素,进而做出外部联盟或内部化生产的制度抉择.在给出了基于成本结构的有关银行联盟决策的分析框架之后,本文进一步提出了,依据成本结构决定因素中业务复杂度与资源特定性不同组合所具有的特征,银行实施联盟策略可以采取的各种具体方案.作者还基于中国银行业的现状,围绕着核心竞争力的构建,讨论了运用联盟策略的阶段性安排.     

开放经济条件下人民币汇率政策手段的选择

目前我国所实行的以市场供求为基础的、单一的、有管理的浮动汇率制,从制度安排上符合今后开放经济条件下我国汇率政策的目标取向,但从长远角度看,随着开放进程的加快,人民币汇率政策手段的单一化将会制约我国经济的均衡发展.特别是加入WTO组织临近,我国经济内外均衡的目标冲突也将更加显现出来.因此,必须进一步完善人民币汇率政策的实施环境,如扩大外汇市场参与主体、注重外汇交易品种的培养和丰富、扩大人民币汇率的浮动范围、完善中央银行的外汇干预等;同时,在多重经济目标并举且相互制约的情况下,为了最大限度地发挥政策效应,人民币汇率政策要同产业政策、利率政策和外汇储备政策协调运作.     

COMPANY PARTICIPATION IN THE AUSTRALIAN ACCOUNTING STANDARDS SETTING PROCESS

Public accessibility to the records of standard setting organisations has encouraged research into the processes involved and the final outcomes. There is also a need to examine the standard setting process by enquiries directed towards the activities of external groups with an interest in the processes. This paper details the results of enquiries into the activities of listed Australian companies towards standard setting and provides an explanation of why some firms participate in the standard setting process and others do not.     

THE ROLE OF ACCOUNTING IN ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE: PROMOTING PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS IN THE PRIVATISED UK WATER INDUSTRY

Privatisation has been one of the most important and controversial policy initiatives to emerge in the U.K. over the last decade. Yet despite its prominence, little so far is known about its impact on those centrally involved in its implementations: senior management. This paper will investigate the ways in which senior management within one of the major privatised industries, the Water Industry, have sought to give effect to the strategic change involved in the transformation of a public sector Water Authority into a private sector Water plc. Although the monopoly character of the supply of Water services has remained intact, managers in the new Water plcs have had to respond to new expectations and assessments of corporate performance from shareholders, investors and financial analysts; from customers; and from a new economic regulatory regime operated by the Director General of the Office of Water Services. The Director General, in addition to operating price controls, is committed to developing “yardstick” competition which will provide the opportunity to make comparative judgements about performance levels achieved by each of the new Water plcs. In pursuit of improvements in efficiency and profitability, senior managers have engineered a variety of restructurings of corporate organisation to give more focus to achieving new business objectives, and to move away from a public sector bureaucratic management style with its traditional tall-pyramid structure to flatter and less hierarchical management structures. Although many of the changes have been justified in terms of empowerment and providing more autonomy for local managers, the paper argues that the experience of change for these managers has largely consisted of being subjected to much greater accountability for their performance through greater emphasis on the achievement of financial targets, more systematic monitoring of performance, the introduction of individual performance appraisal, and performance-related pay. Central to this intensification of the scrutiny of performance have been changes in accounting information systems and how they are used. In examining how these changes have functioned in their organisational context, the paper seeks to contribute to an understanding of the role of accounting in processes of organisational change     

ACCOUNTING REFORMS: DETERMINANTS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS' CHOICES

The introduction of accrual accounting in Italian Local Governments has been mandated in a way that permits, and in fact encourages, a merely formal compliance. Local Governments must produce accrual‐based financial statements, but double‐entry bookkeeping is not mandatory, nor may traditional budgetary accounting be abandoned. Why, then, should they bother to introduce an integrated system of budgetary and accrual accounting? In this paper, we empirically investigate the determinants of Local Government's choices of accounting innovation. According to our results, ‘rational’ elements such as complexity, types of activities performed, presence of surpluses, and access to capital markets are seemingly unhelpful in explaining why a Local Government decides to introduce accrual accounting. What counts are ‘institutional’ and cultural explanations, such as the perceptions of CFOs and the North‐South divide.     

THE DEMAND FOR WATER IN RURAL AREAS: DETERMINANTS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Improving the adequacy and quality of water supplies is a priorityfor rural development in developing countries. So far, the strategiesof governments and international donors for tackling the problemhave been supply-driven; the fundamental importance of demandin the selection of appropriate policies has been virtuallyignored. The realization that effective policy and planningmust take into account what the rural clients want and are preparedto pay for was the impetus for the World Bank's multicountrystudy of households' demand for improved water services. This article summarizes the findings of the 1987–90 investigationof determinants of rural demand in selected regions of LatinAmerica, Africa, and South Asia. The research team used bothdirect (contingent valuation) surveys and indirect (revealedpreference) methods to estimate households' willingness to payfor different levels and types of improvement. The methodologyproduced some illuminating insights into how to decide whatlevel of service is appropriate for a particular community andhow the improved services should be paid for. The team identifiedfour broad categories of village situations, with appropriatepolicies ranging from the provision of house connections atfull cost at one extreme, to no improvement in traditional suppliesat the other extreme.      

A CROSS-SECTIONAL REGRESSION TEST OF THE MEAN-VARIANCE EFFICIENCY OF AN AUSTRALIAN VALUE WEIGHTED MARKET PORTFOLIO

This paper tests the Mean-Variance efficiency of a value weighted Australian market portfolio using a multivariate cross-sectional regression approach developed by Shanken (1985). This test methodology is sufficiently powerful to reject the null hypothesis that the market portfolio is ex ante Mean-Variance efficient when test assets are constructed on the basis of size (market capitalisation). However, when test assets are constructed on the basis of industry classification the model is unable to reject the Mean-Variance efficiency of the market portfolio. This test statistic provides some useful diagnostics which are examined in the paper.     

DETERMINANTS OF CAPITAL STRUCTURE IN THE UK RETAIL INDUSTRY: A COMPARISON OF MULTIPLE REGRESSION AND GENERALIZED REGRESSION NEURAL NETWORK

Firms need to rely on different financing sources, but the question is how capital structure is determined for a particular industry. Our aim is to undertake an investigation into the factors which determine capital structure in the UK retail industry. Our initial sample consists of 163 (final sample: 100) UK retail companies, using data from 2000 in order to analyse capital structure from 2002 to 2006. Nonlinear models tend to be unduly neglected in capital structure research, and so we apply generalized regression neural networks (GRNNs), which are compared with conventional multiple regressions. We utilize a hold‐out sample for the multiple regressions to make them comparable with the GRNNs. Stability of the data is also confirmed. Our main findings are: net profitability and the depreciation‐to‐sales ratio are key determinants of capital structure based on GRNNs, while two more variables are added in the multiple regressions, namely size and quick ratio; there is strong support for the pecking‐order theory; both root‐mean‐square errors and mean absolute errors are much lower for the GRNNs than those for the multiple regressions for overall, training and testing datasets. The potential benefit of this research to financial managers and investors in the UK retail sector is the identification of the overriding role of net profitability in reducing the financial risk from high levels of gearing. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.