Why Press Coverage of a Client Influences the Audit Opinion

In this study I use an experiment to examine why auditors are more likely to issue going–concern opinions when the client has been the subject of negative press coverage prior to the date of the audit opinion. I find no evidence that negative press coverage increases auditors' perceptions of legal liability, as was suggested in the prior literature. I do find, however, that negative press coverage increases auditors' perception of a client's bankruptcy probability and this, in turn, leads auditors to modify the audit opinion. Because the press coverage presented in this study provides no new information, the results suggest that auditors react too strongly to redundant information. This over–reaction can result in inefficient allocation of audit resources and can have deleterious affects on clients. Accordingly, policy makers, auditors and their clients might be interested in how auditors' reliance on redundant information can be reduced.     

An Examination of the Interaction Between Modelling and Its Relationship with Construction Kits: Lessons from the Past and for the Future

Construction kits have played a significant part in nurturing the growth and development of the minds and manipulation-based skills of children (and adults) in formal and non-formal education settings. These kits have origins rooted in the representation of the built world and now have a diversity of form and function, including technical versions with moving parts. This article examines some of the historically based ideas that lie behind the role that kits may have in terms of physical modelling. The article traces the transformation of kits from simple bricks and blocks into more complicated pieces for space-filling and achieving the transfer of forces and motion. This transformation occurred during the Victorian era when the influence of the ideas of educationalists and, perhaps rather strangely, exponents of early aviation, played major roles in determining the diversity of forms of construction kit and modelled possibilities that are now to be seen in classrooms and homes. The article ends with a review of some of the lessons from the past and present that will need to be considered in relation to concrete modelling in schools for the future. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

数据管理:电子商务数据的存储问题

许多情况说明，用于组织中数据存储的消费已经成爆炸状态。产生这种情况的主要因素是电子邮件和电子商务对数据的质量和数量的要求提高了，并且这种数据大部分是分散的、非结构性的，这就增加了对组织中数据管理的要求。本文是在澳大利亚进行的一次调查的基础上做出的，该调查是关于组织中如何处理数据增长和由于数据增长所带来的问题。调查的结果显示人们对该问题表现出高度的关注，同时显示出一种乐观的趋势，即技术将对未来出现的各种各样的问题提供解决方案。     

Getting the Most Out of a Mandatory Subordinated Debt Requirement

Recent advances in asset pricing—the reduced-form approach to pricing risky debt and derivatives—are used to quantitatively evaluate several proposals for mandatory bank issue of subordinated debt. We find that credit spreads on both fixed- and floating-rate subordinated debt provide relatively clean signals of bank risk and are not unduly influenced by nonrisk factors. Fixed-rate debt with a put is unacceptable, but making the putable debt floating resolves most problems. Our approach also helps to clarify several different notions of “bank risk.”