Using Content Analysis to Understand the Consumer Movement

Drawing on the work of Jenkins and Perrow, a content analysis of information in the New York Times Index is examined to analyze the environment of the consumer movement in the United States over a fourteen-year period. The results suggest that a fundamental change has occurred in the movement, with less visible activism and less overt business support being provided.     

High School Economic Education and Access to Financial Services

This study provides a long-term assessment of economic education by examining an individual's decision to have a bank account. Using the results of a nationwide telephone survey, high school courses in economics and business reduced the probability that an adult was unbanked, ceteris paribus. In addition, adults who demonstrated a higher level of understanding of basic economic concepts were less likely to be unbanked. The results indicated that an individual's understanding of the economic system was as important as formal coursework in explaining access to basic financial services.     

Briefing Paper

Between the end of 1979 and the end of 1981 unemployment rose by 1.4 million. After that exceptional period unemployment continued to rise rather less rapidly to its current level of 3.2 million, Of this 3.2 million, about 1.3 million have been unemployed for more than a year. In this Briefing Paper we describe and attempt to explain the processes by which long-term unemployment rose to its current level.
We also discuss two related questions; the first concerns the relationship between unemployment and vacancies and the second concerns the relationship between long-term unemployment and inflation. The final sections consider the policy implications of these findings.     

Common Divisors,Payout Persistence,and Return Predictability

In the finance and accounting literature, the use of a common divisor in the dependent and independent variables of ordinary least‐squares regressions is commonplace. What goes less recognized, however, is that their use induces spurious correlation between the regression variables and invalidates standard testing procedures. This paper analyses the common divisor problem by outlining analytical results concerning the expected R² and providing a simulation procedure that generates test statistics from which critical values can be drawn. To illustrate the procedure, we re‐investigate payout yield return predictability findings that have appeared in the literature and show that the results are spurious.     

The Interaction between Internal Control Assessment and Substantive Testing in Audits for Fraud*

We examine the interaction between internal control assessments and substantive testing in a model of fraud detection. The purpose of our study is to examine a two‐stage model of the auditor‐manager interaction in which the auditor assesses the “likelihood” or possibility of fraud in the first stage and conducts substantive tests in the second stage. We examine the allocation of audit resources across these two distinct facets of the audit. We find that, regardless of the auditor's allocation, the probability of undetected fraud remains the same, but the allocation of some audit resources to internal control assessment may provide cost savings for the auditor.