The Tone from Above: The Effect of Communicating a Supportive Regulatory Strategy on Reporting Quality

In collaboration with the Authority for the Financial Markets in the Netherlands, we manipulate the content of official letters that instruct financial intermediaries to submit a mandatory self‐assessment. As part of the Registered Report Process, we submitted our hypotheses, experimental procedure, and planned statistical analyses before data collection. We predicted that a request indicating a supportive regulatory attitude has a positive effect on reporting quality on average. We also predicted this effect to be stronger for small firms and for firms with a long‐term orientation, and to become negative for firms with a short‐term orientation. Planned analyses show that a supportive letter reduced reporting quality unless firms had a long‐term orientation, supporting the moderating influence of time horizon, but providing no support for the expected average effect or for moderation by firm size.     

Differential infant and child mortality in three Dutch regions, 1812–19091

New micro‐level data have recently become available for three provinces of The Netherlands for the period 1812–1912, which allow the study of the evolution of socio‐economic differentials in infant and childhood mortality. The authors found significant differences in the levels of infant mortality by social group between the three provinces, and a wide variety in the pattern of social inequality. This showed the importance of the regional environment for the level of infant mortality in the nineteenth century. Contrary to expectations, strong social differences were also observed in neonatal mortality. Being born in an urban environment did not have a strong effect on survival during the first year of birth.     

Ethics Research: an Accounting Educator's Perspective

This review of ethics education in accounting shows the contributions of, and gaps in, existing work. The investigation can contribute directly to an ethics educational program, while shedding light on topics that could be usefully extended. The paper is structured uniquely for educational interests by forming primary categories around the needs of the educational manager and the classroom educator; subcategories are drawn from the literature itself. The analysis anchors on McDonald and Donleavy's (1995) review and looks to studies published in the decade between 1995 and early 2005.