Inventory accounting and earnings/price ratios: A puzzle*

Abstract. Economic intuition indicates that each dollar of current pretax cash flow should lead to higher accounting earnings, higher tax payments, and lower stock price under the FIFO rather than the LIFO method of inventory costing. Hence, the earnings/price ratios of the FIFO firms should be higher than those of the LIFO firms. However, the empirical study in this paper provides evidence to the contrary. To search for confounding factors, I examine the possible impacts of size, risk, industry classification, other accounting methods, and expectations of future earnings growth. None of these factors seems to affect the conclusion significantly. Because I have not established a complete causal link between accounting information and stock valuation, I refrain from drawing strong inferences and treat it as a puzzle. This puzzle should stimulate more research in this area in the future. Résumé. L'intuition économique veut que chaque dollar de flux d'encaisse actualisé avant impôt doive produire des bénéfices comptables supérieurs, des impôts à payer plus élevés, et des prix plus faibles des actions si l'on utilise la méthode d'épuisement successif (PEPS) plutôt que la méthode d'épuisement à rebours (DEPS) dans l'establissement du coût des stocks. Les ratios cours/bénéfices des entreprises qui utilisent la méthode PEPS devraient done être plus élevés que ceux des entreprises qui utilisent la méthode DEPS. Toutefois, l'étude empirique effectuée par l'auteur l'amène à des conclusions contraires. Cherchant des facteurs qui tendraient à renverser la situation, il examine l'incidence possible de la taille, du risque, de la classification du secteur, d'autres méthodes comptables et de perspectives de croissance éventuelle des bénéfices. Aucun de ces facteurs ne semble influer sur sa conclusion de façon significative. L'auteur n'ayant pas établi de lien de causalité définitif entre l'information comptable et l'évaluation des actions, il s'abstient de tirer des conclusions fermes et aborde plutôt la question sous forme de puzzle. Un puzzle qui devrait éventuellement stimuler la recherche dans ce domaine.     

Accounting for and Disclosure of Business Combinations

Based upon an extensive analysis of the published financial reports of one hundred of the largest companies in Britain, this paper comments on the degree of disclosure of business combinations and disposals during the last decade. It reveals a situation of significant variability, apparently requiring a radical change in approach from almost complete flexibility to rational uniformity.     

PROFESSIONAL SOCIALISATION, COMMERCIAL PRESSURES AND JUNIOR STAFF'S TIME-PRESSURED IRREGULAR AUDITING—A CONTEXTUAL INTERPRETATION

Research suggests a correlation between commercial concerns, time pressures and junior staff's ‘irregular auditing’ that results in audit failures. This article examines junior staff's irregular auditing in the context of trainees' normal auditing responsibilities and the specific nature of time pressures at their firms. The discussion recognises that omnipresent commercial concerns often leads to adoption of new audit methods that may militate against time pressures. Empirical evidence from in-depth interviews is used to highlight that firms that use risk-based auditing expect their trainees to help realise commercial gains by focusing audit work on areas where material misstatements could occur. The evidence shows that trainees do concentrate work on areas where material misstatements could occur. Acts that reduce audit quality occur in other areas and may often be seen by senior staff who may sanction extra work, if necessary. The article uses these findings to infer that junior staff do not have low regard for audit protocol.     

Performance Reporting by Australian Government Trading Enterprises: an Empirical Study 1998–2002

Performance reporting forms a critical part of the governance processes of government trading enterprises (GTEs). Accountability and transparency are of particular concern because social obligations of GTEs could be compromised by the growing dominance of commercial objectives. An analysis of the reporting of performance information in the annual reports of selected GTEs over a five-year period revealed a number of inadequacies, including diverse approaches to reporting about effectiveness, service quality, achievement of social objectives and comparative non-financial performance. The analysis reinforces the need for further research into how annual reports can better reflect the performance of government businesses.     

The U.S./EU Beef Controversy and a Proposed Framework for Resolving Standards Disputes in International Trade

While world trading institutions such as GATT and its successor, the WTO, have made significant progress in addressing tariff barriers as well as some non‐tariff barriers, trade disputes over product standards appear to be increasing in number and intensity. Product standards refer to measures governments take to ensure that products sold in their home market meet health, safety, and quality requirements consistent with the public interest. The longstanding controversy between the European Union and the United States over the export of hormone treated beef is used as a case study to illustrate the difficulty of resolving product standards disputes.     

Ordinal Pairwise Partitioning (OPP) Approach to Neural Networks Training in Bond rating

Statistical classification methods such as multivariate discriminant analysis have been widely used in bond rating classification in spite of the limitations of the methodology. Recently, neural networks have emerged as new methods for business classification. This approach to neural networks training is to categorize a new instance as one of the predefined bond classes. Such a conventional approach has limitations in dealing with the ordinal nature of bond rating. In addition, most of the prior studies have used sample data which are evenly divided among the classes. However, the natural population in real application is usually unevenly divided among the classes. Under such circumstances, it is hard to achieve good predictive performance. As the number of classes to be recognized increases, the predictive performance decreases. In this article, to increase the predictive performance in real-world bond rating, we propose the ordinal pairwise partitioning (OPP) approach to backpropagation neural networks training. The main idea of the OPP approach is to partition the data set in the ordinal and pairwise manner according to the output classes. Then, each backpropagation neural networks model is trained by using each partitioned data set and is separately used for classification. Experimental results show that the predictive performance of the proposed OPP approach can be significantly enhanced, when compared to the conventional neural networks modeling approach as well as multivariate discriminant analysis. The OPP approach has two computation methods, and we discuss under which circumstances one method performs better than the other. We also show the generalizability of the OPP approach. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flextime and Profitability

Despite the well‐documented benefits of flexible work schedules (flextime), generalizable assessments of how flextime influences organizational profitability have proven elusive. Using a unique data set representative of organizations in Canada, we examine the effect of flextime in combination with organizational strategies to predict profitability. Using fixed effects and controlling for prior profitability, we find that flextime increases profitability when implemented within a strategy centered on employees but decreases profitability when implemented within a strategy focused on cost reduction.     

Why Don't Households Have a Checking Account?

Using the Surveys of Consumer Finance from 1989 to 2001, this study expolres households’ reasons for not having a checking account. Reasons havechanged over time, shifting away from account features and toward human capital and institutional reasons. We also find that reasons for not having an account are related to income, race/ethnicity, marital status/gender, planning horizon, education, previous account experience, and credit history. We suggest potential responses for community educators, firms, and policy makers.