The Impact of Financial Reporting Regulation on the Market Valuation of Reported Environmental Liabilities: Preliminary Evidence from US and Canadian Public Companies

This study investigates the economic consequences of four financial reporting regulations relating to environmental liability reporting in samples of 170 US and 156 Canadian public companies during the period 1984 to 1997. The study's purpose is to investigate the factors that make financial reporting regulation effective in enhancing the relevance and reliability of accounting information. Prior research provides the theory that financial reporting regulations impose costs on managers and create incentives for them to report accounting information that is relevant and unbiased. This study assesses these regulations' enforceability, which is viewed as arising from the regulator's power to enforce its regulations by sanctions or penalties. It tests whether the relation between market valuation and reported environmental liability accruals changes when the new regulations are enacted, and whether regulation with high enforceability has a more significant impact than regulation with low enforceability. This study uses a residual‐income valuation model to measure the valuation coefficient, or multiplier, on reported environmental liability accruals. Changes in this coefficient are used as indicators of changes in the market's assessment of the value relevance and bias of the reported accounting information. This study provides preliminary evidence indicating that financial reporting regulations issued by the securities market regulator and the accounting profession are associated with changes in the relation between market value and reported environmental liabilities in some cases, and suggests avenues for further international accounting research on the factors involved in financial reporting regulation's impact.     

Telling more than the truth: Implicature,speech acts,and ethics in professional communication

Ethicists have long observed that unethical communication may result from texts that contain no overt falsehoods but are nevertheless misleading. Less clear, however, has been the way that context and text work together to create misleading communication. Concepts from linguistics can be used to explain implicature and indirect speech acts, two patterns which, though in themselves not unethical, may allow misinterpretations and, therefore, create potentially unethical communication. Additionally, sociolinguistic theory provides insights into why writers in business and other professions are prone to use these patterns. An analysis of five cases shows that implicature and indirectness are sometimes used intentionally to deceive readers. However, their use may also reflect other motives such as the desire to mitigate negative information or to show deference to an unfamiliar or powerful reader. Although implicature and indirectness are not intended to deceive in these cases, they can lead to a loss of clarity and to subsequent ethical problems when readers misinterpret texts.Kathryn Riley is an Associate Professor of Composition at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, where she teaches Advanced Business Writing and various courses in the Linguistics Program. She has published a number of articles on linguistics and writing, and is co-author ofExercises in Linguistics (1990).     

It Goes without Saying: The Effects of Intrinsic Motivational Orientation,Leadership Emphasis of Intrinsic Goals,and Audit Issue Ambiguity on Speaking Up

Regulation requires auditors to raise significant audit issues and concerns to the attention of audit engagement leadership and requires leadership to encourage such communication. This research demonstrates, using an experiment and a survey, that audit team members' willingness to speak up about such issues is associated with their intrinsic motivational orientation. Based on this result, we test whether audit leadership can leverage this relationship to increase speaking up, particularly when audit issues are more ambiguous, by emphasizing intrinsic goals. Results across three additional experiments indicate that auditors whose leaders emphasize intrinsic goals, whether directly or through tone at the top and firm culture, are more likely to speak up than are other auditors. We also find that auditors are more likely to speak up when an audit issue is less versus more ambiguous. We conclude that leadership can fulfill their obligation to encourage upward communication by emphasizing intrinsic versus extrinsic goals, regardless of the level of ambiguity surrounding the audit issue.     

The local market perception of firm risks during cross-listing events

We examine the local investors’ perceptions on the relative idiosyncratic risks around cross-listing events. We find that increases in relative firm-specific risks around the listing date are temporary and small for Level I American depositary receipts (ADRs) while Level III ADRs have the most variations. For exchange-listed ADRs from emerging markets, there is a significant decrease in the relative firm-specific risk in the year prior to listing, which increases during the cross-listing, while there are only significant increases in relative firm-specific risks for developed market firms. We interpret these as evidences of negative relationship between firm opaqueness and relative firm-specific risks.     

Human capital in the internationalization of family firms

Research concerning the influence of human capital (HC) on internationalization strategies typically highlights skills displayed by business executives. This article is one of the few studies that examines the values, attitudes, and capabilities related to the HC of international companies. Our study attempts to understand the role that HC plays in the international commitment (IC) achieved by family and nonfamily firms and whether the HC of family firms (FFs) can be considered a source of competitive advantage in pursuing an international strategy. Partial Least Squares method is used for analyzing data collected from 270 Spanish firms. Results show HC differs between family and non‐FFs and plays a crucial role in the international strategy of FFs. Specifically, professional experience, training, and educational level, the degree of market and industry knowledge, specific skills to work in international markets, and concern for employees are superior in FFs, resulting in the achievement of higher levels of IC when compared to non‐FFs. The results should encourage managers and/or owners of these companies to exploit and effectively govern specific human resource strengths when they enter and experience growth in other markets.     

The Determinants of Educational Attainment: Modeling and Estimating the Human Capital Model and Education Production Functions

This paper develops and estimates a theoretical model of an individual's high school graduation choice. The model incorporates the idea of a utility-maximizing youth responding to the economic incentives associated with incremental education, as posited by the human capital literature. However, it also allows for family, neighborhood, and school characteristics to affect the process of being educated, as posited by the education production function literature. Estimation of the model, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) supplemented with neighborhood and school data, indicates that indeed students respond to economic incentives in making education choices; however, most of the effects of background characteristics are working through the education process rather than affecting returns to schooling.     

Challenges Facing Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in the Kyrgyz Republic, 1996-7

Based on high quality household survey data from 1996 and 1997, this paper analyzes the challenges facing non-farm household businesses in the Kyrgyz Republic. The non-farm businesses are small, concentrated in service activities, and rely on family labour. They are new enterprises established after the transition from central planning began, rather than state enterprises formed during the planning era and subsequently privatized. High taxes, low product demand, and high input prices are the three most cited challenges, while the problems facing small businesses do not include credit availability, capacity concerns, input availability, or labour costs. Frequent mention of licence difficulties and extortion, in addition to high taxes, indicates that the grabbing hand of the government is a major obstacle to private businesses. The government is also failing to maintain law and order; in 1996 a quarter of the businesses report violence among their three main challenges.     

Empirical foundations for the resurrection of Heckscher–Ohlin theory

We decompose the factor content of trade into Heckscher–Ohlin–Vanek trade and Ricardian trade. We measure factor content using only the United States' technology and also as Leontief advocated, using the local technology. In either case, differences in endowments are quite important in explaining the factor content of trade. If one uses raw estimated coefficients as a means of comparison, differences in endowments are ten times as important as differences in technology.     

The Dollar Exposure of Japanese Companies

The bulk of Japanese exports and imports are denominated in U.S. dollars rather than Japan's local currency, the yen. The consequences of dollar invoicing depend importantly on the extent to which Japanese companies hedge their dollar exposures. If they fully hedge their dollar exposures, then the choice of invoicing currency will not influence the yen profits of Japanese companies. This paper examines the degree to which Japanese companies hedge by estimating their exposure to movements in the dollar. Using Japanese stock market data and an international version of the CAPM model I estimate the extent to which Japanese company returns are correlated with changes in the yen–dollar exchange rate. The results suggest many Japanese companies are indeed exposed to yen–dollar movements and that dollar appreciations generally are positively correlated with firm returns. Since over the period 1984 to 1995, the dollar depreciated by 36% relative to the yen, it follows that the values of Japanese companies fell as a consequence of their dollar exposure.J. Japan. Int. Econ.Dec. 1998,12(4), pp. 388–405. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1220.Copyright 1998 Academic Press.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers F31, G12, F23.     

Informal conflict intervention: Advice and dissent

A disparity appears to exist between how managers are advised to handle conflict and the intervention methods that they utilize in actual practice. Normative advice tends to agree that managers should adopt a facilitative, mediatorlike role (e.g., Walton, 1987; Tjosvold, 1990), while the empirical research suggests that managers are much more controlling, often deciding how to resolve the problem on their own (e.g., Kolb, 1986; Sheppard, 1983). The present study focuses on two potential reasons as to why managers utilize the methods they do: (1) They treat choices instrumentally to achieve key goals and (2) they interpret or frame conflicts in a form that suggests directive action. One hundred and eighty managers were interviewed about a recent effort to intervene in a dispute at work. The results confirm that managers are very controlling when intervening in disputes and relates this to both interpretive frame and, to a lesser extent, managerial goals. A canonical analysis appears to emphasize the pivotal role that frame plays in influencing whether or not managers choose the solution. Implications of these results for managerial action are discussed.