A study of earnings-management motives in the Anglo-American and Euro-Continental accounting models: The Canadian and French cases

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors that potentially influence earnings-management policy with reference to the Anglo-American and Euro-Continental accounting models. Canada and France, respectively, belong to those different socio-economic environments. Earnings-management practices detected in those countries are expected to be affected by specific socio-economic features of the Anglo-American and the Euro-Continental environments. We explain earnings-management practices by incentives suggested in the literature to reveal which motives are prominent within each environment.We tested our earnings-management motives (EMM) model using appropriate panel-estimation techniques over 1674 Canadian and 1470 French firm-year observations. Our results provide evidence that incentives for earnings management for French firms are specifically linked to contractual debt costs and effective tax rate. However, Canadian firms show specific incentives matched with a dynamic capital market. Issuing equity is a strong motive for earnings management in Canadian firms.     

Islamic tourism: an empirical examination of travel motivation and satisfaction in Malaysia

The objectives of this study are to test the relationship between tourism motivations and tourist satisfaction, and to test how ‘Religion’ moderates the relationship. The variable ‘Religion’ is represented by the availability of Islamic norms and practices relevant to tourism at the destination. The results of the partial least square indicate that tourism motivations are significantly and positively related to tourist satisfaction. The results also showed that Religion significantly moderates the relationship between pull motivation and tourist satisfaction. However, the moderating effect of Religion on the relationship between push motivation and tourist satisfaction was not supported.     

Bridging bargaining theory with the regulation of a natural monopoly

Review of Economic Design - In this paper, we integrate the bargaining theory with the problem of regulating a natural monopoly under symmetric information or asymmetric information with complete...     

Regulating a Manager‐controlled Natural Monopoly with Unknown Costs

We study the regulation of a manager‐controlled natural monopoly with unknown costs, borrowing from Baron and Myerson (BM) (1982), where the monopoly is controlled by the owner. We consider the case where the regulator can tax the owner as well as the case where she cannot. We find that the optimal price schedule generally lies below the one in the BM model and that it can be as low as the marginal cost if the compensation parameter is sufficiently small and the regulator cannot tax the monopoly owner. We also identify the cases where the monopoly owner prefers to delegate the control to a manager. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of the review process in hypothesis generation tasks

This paper examines the performance of auditors in generating hypotheses in an analytical review case both prior to and after review. It partitions two possible sources of gain from the review process, namely the discussion effect and the rank effect. The discussion effect compares review groups with and without discussion. The rank effect compares seniors and audit managers. The study found that the review process results in more plausible hypotheses being generated. Discussion within the review process between reviewer and reviewee was found to be one source of gain from the review process. While there was no difference in the performance of the senior and manager reviewers, managers completed the task in less time.     

Do accounting standards matter to financial analysts? An empirical analysis of the effect of cross-listing from different accounting standards regimes on analyst following and forecast error

This paper explores whether the effects of cross-listing on analyst following and forecast error differ among firms with different accounting standards. The results reveal a higher increase in the number of analysts for cross-listed firms that follow their home country's GAAP prior to cross-listing and reconcile or switch to IAS/US GAAP or UK GAAP after cross-listing, compared to those that adopt IAS or US GAAP prior to cross-listing. We find that firms that switch to IAS/US GAAP have a higher increase in analyst following after cross-listing compared to firms that reconcile to IAS/US GAAP. In addition, we find a higher increase in analyst following after cross-listing for firms from low-level accounting standards environments compared to firms from high-level accounting standards environments. Our results show evidence of an increase in the magnitude of analysts’ forecast error after cross-listing for firms that follow their home country's GAAP pre-cross-listing but reconcile post-cross-listing to IAS/US GAAP or UK GAAP. On the other hand, we report a decrease in forecast error for firms that switch to IAS/US GAAP.     

Robust Markowitz mean‐variance portfolio selection under ambiguous covariance matrix

This paper studies a robust continuous‐time Markowitz portfolio selection problem where the model uncertainty affects the covariance matrix of multiple risky assets. This problem is formulated into a min–max mean‐variance problem over a set of nondominated probability measures that is solved by a McKean–Vlasov dynamic programming approach, which allows us to characterize the solution in terms of a Bellman–Isaacs equation in the Wasserstein space of probability measures. We provide explicit solutions for the optimal robust portfolio strategies and illustrate our results in the case of uncertain volatilities and ambiguous correlation between two risky assets. We then derive the robust efficient frontier in closed form, and obtain a lower bound for the Sharpe ratio of any robust efficient portfolio strategy. Finally, we compare the performance of Sharpe ratios for a robust investor and for an investor with a misspecified model.     

Time series analysis of the nexus among corruption,political instability and judicial inefficiency in Pakistan

The purpose of this study is two folds: firstly, to analyze the direction of causality between corruption and political instability directly and secondly, to determine the causality between corruption and political instability indirectly through judicial inefficiency in Pakistan. The causality between corruption, political instability and judicial inefficiency is tested by applying Toda–Yamamoto Granger causality test. The results show that there is a lack of direct causal relationship between corruption and political instability. However, political instability and corruption cause each other indirectly through judicial inefficiency. The study highlights the critical role of judicial inefficiency leading to an important policy implication.     

What Can Child Anthropometry Reveal About Living Standards and Public Policy? An Illustration from Central Asia

The paper considers the case for the use of data on weight and height of children to assess living standards and public policy, contrasting them with monetized measures of welfare based on household incomes or expenditures. Data on child anthropometry are then used from Uzbekistan, the most populous of the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, to investigate rural–urban differences in living standards, the impact of kindergartens on nutritional status, and the targeting of means-tested social assistance. Conclusions are drawn for the use of information on child anthropometry in the design of public policy.