Stakeholder perceptions of performance audit credibility

This paper examines the credibility of performance audit at the micro-level of practice using the general framework of Birnbaum and Stegner's theory of source credibility in which credibility is dependent upon perceptions of the independence of the auditors, their technical competence and the usefulness of audit findings. It reports the results of a field study of a performance audit by the Australian National Audit Office conducted in a major government department. The paper establishes that problems of auditor independence, technical competence and perceived audit usefulness continue to limit the credibility of performance auditing.     

Macroeconomic Policy Design in the European Monetary Union: A Numerical Game Approach

Optimal economic reactions of European policy-makers on exogenous shocks are determined by simulating a global macroeconomic model under different institutional arrangements. In particular, it is investigated whether discretionary or rule-based policies and whether non-cooperative or cooperative policies for Europe result in a better performance as measured by intertemporal objective functions. The results show that the answers to these questions depend strongly on the nature of the shock to which European economies are exposed. For a negative supply shock, rule-based policies dominate, whereas for a negative demand shock, cooperative fiscal policy-making within the European Monetary Union gives the best results.     

Financial liberalization,financial sector development and growth: Evidence from Malaysia

The objective of this paper is to examine whether financial development leads to economic growth or vice versa in the small open economy of Malaysia. Using time series data from 1960 to 2001, we conduct cointegration and causality tests to assess the finance-growth link by taking the real interest rate and financial repression into account. The empirical evidence suggests that financial liberalization, through removing the repressionist policies, has a favorable effect in stimulating financial sector development. Financial depth and economic development are positively related; but contrary to the conventional findings, our results support Robinson's view that output growth leads to higher financial depth in the long-run.     

Characteristics of an effective fund-raising letter

When you set out to write a fund-raising letter, make sure you know precisely to whom you're writing and why--and be certain your letter makes that point just as clear to them as it is to you.     

Distortions of History, Accounting and the Paradox of Werner Sombart

Sombart's belief that double-entry bookkeeping was essential to the development of capitalism has been criticized by both accounting and economic historians. His substantive conclusions concerning double-entry bookkeeping have been rejected mainly because they result from his selective and self-serving rendition of history. Accounting historians have been preoccupied especially with denouncing his exaggerated appreciation of double-entry bookkeeping. They argue that he attributes far too much importance to its potentialities in preference to the more sober reality found in the historical record. This paper shows that in their denunciation of Sombart's conclusions and his faulty history, accounting history researchers have been seemingly oblivious to the way in which Sombart's anti-Semitism shaped his appreciation of double-entry bookkeeping. He accuses Jews, as exceptional exponents of rational profit calculation, of perpetrating the evils of capitalism. His views of double-entry bookkeeping and the history of economic systems betrayed a strong attachment to a romantic conception of German history which supported German anti-Semitism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sombart's denunciation of Jewish influences extended from their business practices to observations of Jews that were consistently anti-Semitic and sympathetic to those of the Nazis.     

Macroeconomic impacts of European union membership of central and eastern European economies

This paper examines the impact of an eastern enlargement of the European Union. This is modeled as an increase in total factor productivity and a decrease in the risk premium for the central and eastern European countries (CEECs). In particular, a multicountry model of the world economy is used to assess the direct effects and spillovers of these changes. Inflation targeting for the euro zone by the European Central Bank and alternative scenarios with respect to fiscal policy behavior in the CEECs are considered. According to these simulations, productivity effects are stronger than risk premium effects, and spillovers are small.