Conditional and Unconditional Conservatism:Concepts and Modeling

We develop a model that captures the distinct natures of and interactions between conditional and unconditional conservatism. Under unconditional conservatism, the book value of net assets is understated due to predetermined aspects of the accounting process. Under conditional conservatism, book value is written down under sufficiently adverse circumstances, but not up under favorable circumstances. The specification of earnings provided by the model yields hypotheses about how unconditional conservatism and other factors preempt conditional conservatism and so affect the asymmetric response of earnings to positive and negative share returns, both current and lagged, documented by Basu (1995, “Conservatism and the Asymmetric Timeliness of Earnings.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester’ 1997, “The Conservatism Principle and the Asymmetric Timeliness of Earnings.” Journal of Accounting and Economics 24, 3–37).This revised version was published online in August 2005 with a corrected cover date.     

Too Busy to Mind the Business? Monitoring by Directors with Multiple Board Appointments

We examine the number of external appointments held by corporate directors. Directors who serve larger firms and sit on larger boards are more likely to attract directorships. Consistent with Fama and Jensen (1983), we find that firm performance has a positive effect on the number of appointments held by a director. We find no evidence that multiple directors shirk their responsibilities to serve on board committees. We do not find that multiple directors are associated with a greater likelihood of securities fraud litigation. We conclude that the evidence does not support calls for limits on directorships held by an individual.     

High-Water Marks and Hedge Fund Management Contracts

Incentive fees for money managers are frequently accompanied by high‐water mark provisions that condition the payment of the performance fee upon exceeding the previously achieved maximum share value. In this paper, we show that hedge fund performance fees are valuable to money managers, and conversely, represent a claim on a significant proportion of investor wealth. The high‐water mark provisions in these contracts limit the value of the performance fees. We provide a closed‐form solution to the cost of the high‐water mark contract under certain conditions. Our results provide a framework for valuation of a hedge fund management company.     

Unit initial public offerings: Staged equity or signaling mechanism?

We investigate the use of unit (i.e., package) initial public offerings by Australian industrial firms and conclude that their use reflects their role as a signaling mechanism (Chemmanur and Fulghieri, 1997), as distinct from the agency–cost explanation offered by Schultz (1993). From a sample of 394 IPOs between 1976 and 1994, the 66 firms making unit offerings are typically riskier, use less prestigious underwriters and have a lower level of retained ownership than other IPO firms. While these results are also consistent with Schultz's agency cost explanation, other results we report are not. We find no difference in underpricing etween unit IPOs and other IPO firms, nor are there any significant differences in the planned uses of proceeds reported in the prospectus, post–listing failure rates or secondary equity offerings of the type predicted by Schultz. We do however, report evidence consistent with a prediction unique to the signaling explanation. After controlling for the level of ownership retained by insiders, the proportion of firm value sold as warrants is increasing in IPO firms' riskiness.     

International, Local and Regional Government Alliances

Kent County Council now promotes itself as the 'European County', a message that it seeks to deliver to the heart of institutional Europe through its Brussels office. Commentators generally agree that Kent has demonstrated how British local authorities can play an influential role at the European level, but will this acknowledged success be sufficient to maintain Kent's position over the coming years in a rapidly changing Europe where large regions look set to wield the power? This article reviews how Kent formed alliances with authorities in the same region of north-west Europe. How real are these supra-national groupings and what benefits can they bring to the partner areas?     

Colliery Closures and the Decline of the UK Coal Industry

In the 10 years after the 1984–5 miners' strike, employment by British Coal and the number of pits it operated fell by more than 90%. In this paper data for each of British Coal's collieries are used to analyse the pattern of pit closure. The pits that closed were systematically smaller, less productive and less profitable than those that survived. A model is estimated to capture the degree to which closure decisions reflect performance variables, and it is found that low productivity was the most important indicator of vulnerability to closure. However, closures were by no means exclusively concentrated on the worst performers, and many of the pits that were closed at the end of the period had achieved very large increases in productivity over the years preceding closure.     

Contagion or Competition: Going Concern Audit Opinions for Real Estate Firms

We examine whether intra–industry information transfers from going–concern audit opinion announcements create contagion or competitive stock price reactions for other real estate firms operating in the same line of business. Using returns from publicly-traded land subdivision/development firms and Real Estate Investment Trusts, we find modest evidence supporting a competitive effect among rival firms as a result of another real estate firm announcing the receipt of a Going Concern Opinion (GCO) from its independent auditors.     

Technology and Rights

What do we know about technology and rights? This article provides a fairly comprehensive overview of current issues regarding this topic. We explore and analyse a wide spectrum of rights that are challenged in this current era of technological convergence. We use the United States Bill of Rights as an example of the vulnerability of legal protections for rights against particular political and technological changes in this post 9-11 climate. New streams of rights acting as a safeguard against further incursions of technology into civil liberties are explored. We also address intellectual property rights and international trends in copyright, patent and trademark laws. We question whether these issues of technology and rights have a place in current technological literacy scenarios.