Institutional Change of Accounting Systems: The Adoption of a Regime of Adapted International Financial Reporting Standards

Richard Mattessich, New York: Garland Publishing (New Works in Accounting History), 2000, £43.00, xii +179pp. ISBN: 0-8153-3445-1     

Antecedents and consequences of the perceived adjustment of Japanese expatriates in the USA

The present study was designed to better understand the antecedents and consequences of expatriate adjustment in an international assignment. The researchers surveyed Japanese expatriates assigned to the United States. Structural equation modeling was utilized to test our hypotheses and model. The results indicated that previous knowledge of the host country, language proficiency, willingness to communicate and perception of the novelty of the host culture were differentially related to expatriates' adjustment to the host country. General and work adjustments were negatively related to expatriates' intent to return early. In addition, interrelationships among the adjustment dimensions were examined and the results indicated that general adjustment leads to work adjustment, which, in turn, influences interactional adjustment. Implications for future research are presented.     

Aggregation bias, compositional change, and the border effect

Borders affect the composition, not only the level, of interregional trade. In disaggregated U.S. Commodity Flow data, border effects vary substantially across commodities. Substantial border–induced compositional change suggests the possibility that standard estimates suffer from aggregation bias arising from endogenous industry location patterns and the presence of zero observations in commodity–level trade. Adjusting for these effects reduces the estimate of the aggregate border effect from 20.9 to 5.7. JEL Classification: F14, F15
Biais d'agrégation, changement de composition, et effet de frontières. Les frontières affectent la composition et pas seulement le volume de commerce inter-régional. Une analyse des données désagrégées des flux de commerce de biens des Etats-Unis montre que l'effet de frontières varie substantiellement selon les biens. Le changement de composition du commerce engendré par les frontières suggère la possibilité que les estimations usuelles souffrent d'un biais d'agrégation résultant des patterns de localisation industrielle endogènes et de la présence d'observations nulles dans le commerce de certains biens. Un ajustement pour tenir compte de ces effets suggère que les effets de frontières passent de 20.9 à 5.7.     

Public interest versus regulatory capture in the Swedish electricity market

This article tests the public interest and regulatory capture hypotheses, in the context of the Swedish electricity market, by studying the factors influencing the Swedish Energy Agency’s decision to replace decision-makers it employs to hear customer complaints against utilities. The study covers the period from the beginning of 1996, when a series of regulatory reforms were introduced to improve consumer protection, until the end of 2008. The study concludes that decision-makers who find in favor of customers have had a statistically lower probability of being removed, consistent with public interest theory. A transitory effect of favoring utilities can be observed for the period from 2 to 6 years following the reforms. In this period, government and public scrutiny of the regulator, which had been high in the immediate aftermath of the reforms, had waned and there were few precedents decided by the courts that the regulator was required to follow. This vacuum created an opportunity for the utilities to increase their influence over the regulator. Once the courts started establishing precedents in relatively large numbers, the supervisory role of the courts ensured that the actions of the regulator were scrutinized. This development has served a similar function to government and public scrutiny in the years immediately following the reforms in promoting the public interest.     

On the relationship between female labour force participation and fertility in G7 countries: evidence from panel cointegration and Granger causality

This article examines the relationship between the female labour force participation rate and total fertility rate for the G7 countries from 1960 to 2006 using panel unit root, panel cointegration, Granger causality and long-run structural estimation. The article’s main findings are that the female labour force participation rate and total fertility rate are cointegrated for the panel of G7 countries; that long-run Granger causality runs from the total fertility rate to the female labour force participation rate and that a 1% increase in the total fertility rate results in a 0.4% decrease in the female labour force participation rate for the G7 countries.