Should utopians have perfect bodies?

Is one who imagines a “perfect” (or vastly improved) society also obliged or inclined to imagine a “perfect” (or vastly improved) body as part of her project? If there is in fact a utopian tradition imagining perfect bodies, what new alternatives are conceivable? Should utopian writers pursue any or all of them? Attempts to provide an answer provide critics with perhaps their most penetrating objections to the utopian project since imagining and reproducing perfect bodies entails an intrusiveness even greater than political or economic perfection. But the very intimacy of the body as a site also offers insights into the utopian imagination. Just as certain practices are excised in utopias (private property or money, for instance) and certain ones enhanced (education), so too are utopian bodies, which can be imagined as liberated prisons or improved forms. The utopian body, itself a complex site, becomes the most vivid focus for imaging the nature of perfection itself. New bodies, dramatically enhanced ones such as cyborgs or dramatically reduced ones such as cyber bodies, offer an intense examination of what perfection means and what lengths are worth pursuing to achieve it.     

A field experiment to explore the effects of detection and penalties communications and framing among Washington State retail firms

The Washington Department of Revenue facilitated a field experiment to explore opportunities to increase Use Tax and Business and Occupation (B&O) Tax compliance by retail industry firms. The experiment tested two enforcement strategies (actually put in place by the State of Washington): communication of noncompliance penalties and announcement of an enhanced detection initiative. Of special interest was whether the compliance initiatives would differentially influence firms in divergent financial positions (increasing versus decreasing revenues). Findings were consistent with the gain/loss framing concept of prospect theory: the elevated enforcement initiatives increased both actual reported Washington State Use taxes and B&O Taxes more for firms with declining revenues (loss frame) than for firms with raising revenues (gain frame). Historically the Use Tax has had a low rate of compliance while the B&O Tax has had a high rate of compliance; thus we tested two very different taxes. The results of the experiment suggest that revenue agencies with limited resources may benefit from focusing greater compliance enhancement efforts on firms with declining revenues as more tax dollars will be generated from these taxpayers. For tax researchers, this experiment demonstrates that gain/loss tax framing can occur in nature by means other than withholding.     

‘A dense mass of petty accountability’: Accounting in the service of cultural imperialism during the Irish Famine, 1846–1847

One response of the imperial government in London to the Irish Famine (1845–1849) was to initiate a scheme of public works underpinned by relief payments based on task work. This policy was informed by a determination to improve the ‘moral habits’ of the native Irish in relation to work. To support the data collection and control systems necessary to operate this intervention, the imperial government recruited a large number of accountants charged with introducing a vast accounting apparatus to Ireland. The institutionalisation of accounting that this facilitated laid the basis for interventions by the imperial power intended to ‘civilise’ the native Gaelic population as well as recalcitrant Anglo-Irish landlords. This intervention is considered within the context of concepts of governmentality and cultural imperialism.     

Corporate governance,accounting and finance: A review

We review accounting and finance research on corporate governance (CG). In the course of our review, we focus on a particularly vexing issue, namely endogeneity in the relationships between CG and other matters of concern to accounting and finance scholars, and suggest ways to deal with it. Given the advent of large commercial CG databases, we also stress the importance of how CG is measured and in particular, the construction of CG indices, which should be sensitive to local institutional arrangements, and the need to capture both internal and external aspects of governance. The ‘stickiness’ of CG characteristics provides an additional challenge to CG scholars. Better theory is required, for example, to explain whether various CG practices substitute for each other or are complements. While a multidisciplinary approach to developing better theory is never without its difficulties, it could enrich the current body of knowledge in CG. Despite the vastness of the existing CG literature, these issues do suggest a number of avenues for future research.     

Does the Stock Market Compensate Banks for Diversifying into the Insurance Business?

This paper explores a wide range of corporate restructurings, all available deals from wire services, in the banking and insurance sectors that led to bancassurance ventures. An event study methodology is employed to calculate excess returns on and around the deals’ announcement date. Using both univariate and multivariate analysis the paper finds bank driven mergers, deal's size and regional categorization all triggering positive and significant market reactions. Unlike the univariate framework, multivariate analysis shows that geographic focus and language are not significant factors. The results also indicate that markets are indifferent with respect to bank withdrawals from the bank‐insurance operations. Finally, Canadian, U.S. and European bank‐insurance deals produce positive results, while Australasian bidders offer statistically insignificant equity returns.     

Measures of the Timeliness of Earnings

We explore relationships among four measures of ‘timeliness’ in the financial accounting research literature: the Ball and Brown (1968) measure; Dyer and McHugh's (1975) reporting lag; the Khan and Watts (2009) measure; and the Beekes and Brown (2006) measure. There are good reasons why the measures might be related and also why they might differ. Thus we examine the extent to which they are empirically related, using data for a sample of Australian companies over the period 1994 to 2005. Overall, we find the four measures share a common label, ‘timeliness’, but not much else.     

Optimal group size in microlending

Microlending, where a bank lends to a small group of people without credit histories, began with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, and is widely seen as the creation of Muhammad Yunus, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his largely successful efforts. Since that time the modeling of microlending has received a fair amount of academic attention. One of the issues not yet addressed in full detail, however, is the issue of the size of the group. Some attention has nevertheless been paid using an experimental and game theory approach. We, instead, take a mathematical approach to the issue of an optimal group size, where the goal is to minimize the probability of default of the group. To do this, one has to create a model with interacting forces, and to make precise the hypotheses of the model. We show that the original choice of Muhammad Yunus, of a group size of five people, is, under the right, and, we believe, reasonable hypotheses, either close to optimal, or even at times exactly optimal, i.e., the optimal group size is indeed five people.

     

Shades of Gray: An empirical examination of Gray's model of culture and income measurement practices using 20-F data

Gray (1988) developed a theory linking accounting values and systems to Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions. To date, no studies have used actual reported data to test the Gray model. This study addresses this shortcoming by using data from the SEC Form 20-F to test proposed relationships between Gray's (1988) accounting value of conservatism (in income measurement practices) and Hofstede's (1980) cultural values. It also tests three other non-cultural environmental variables (tax rates, relative size of capital markets, and influence of the European Union) proposed by Gray (1988) and Salter and Niswander (1995) as modifiers to cultural effects. The results of this study suggest that, as theorized by Gray (1988), the cultural variable individualism is significantly and positively related to differences in income measurement practices between countries. This study also finds that a country's membership in the EU and corporate tax rate is related to income measurement practice differences. However, unlike previous studies, this study does not find that the source of equity is related to income measurement practices.     

Cross-country differences in the contribution of future migration to old-age financing

As life expectancy increases and fertility declines, population aging puts pressure on the financing of welfare states in Europe and other developed countries. Given that immigrant workers are younger than the domestic population, a continuous flow of immigrants reduces the old-age dependency ratio and improves financing. Existing general equilibrium estimates of the public finance contribution of migration, performed with different models, are not comparable across countries and sometimes differ even in sign. We use the same overlapping-generations model with a detailed representation of institutions and labor market activity to provide comparable estimates of the impact of immigration on public finance in four European countries. We find that future projected immigration flows are equivalent to 14.3 % points labor income taxes in Austria, 7.3 points in Germany, 6.2 points in the UK and 1.7 points in Poland in 2060. These differences are due to the projected volume of immigration and institutional setups, among other factors. For comparable volumes of immigration, future flows have largest impact in Germany and smallest in the UK.