CAP Forum on Forensic Accounting in the Post‐Enron World: Education for Investigative and Forensic Accounting*/FORMATION ET JURICOMPTABILITÉ

Recent financial scandals have raised the awareness that accountants should be alert to potential fraud and other economic disputes and can provide significant assistance in preventing, investigating, and resolving such matters. Forensic accountants provide these services with knowledge of court requirements and proceedings so that effective legal action is possible, even though most actions are concluded without the involvement of the courts. Although forensic accounting was growing in importance even before Enron and the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act, the ensuing tightening of the securities regulations in both Canada and the United States triggered recognition that accounting students and professionals need a fuller understanding of fraud and other economic crimes, and how to find, prevent, and resolve them, as well as the career choices that could be involved. While some of this material is covered in auditing texts and courses, emerging expectations will require the enhancement and restructuring of forensic accounting education within university programs, and will encourage more interest in graduate specialist professional designations. This paper has two objectives: to offer insights into the design and delivery of forensic accounting programs, and into the availability of professional programs; and to provide some exploratory evidence on the type of services currently rendered by investigative and forensic accountants in Canada.     

The Diffusion of Calculative and Collaborative HRM Practices in European Firms

The aim of this paper is to trace and explain variations in calculative and collaborative human resource management (HRM) practices between companies and across national borders. Variations and similarities are explained in terms of the convergence and divergence of HRM practices determined by national institutions, and the increasing influence of multinational companies (MNCs). We explore the diffusion of HRM practices in Europe over time, using data sets from two surveys conducted in several European countries in 1995 and 2000. We use institutional explanations for the development of three selected bundles of HRM practices: individual, calculative performance‐oriented practices; collective incentive schemes for the alignment of interests; and collaborative practices that seek to enhance the commitment of employees. We found substantial effects of country‐specific institutions and of the country of origin of MNCs, which clearly support the institutional duality thesis. Foreign‐owned MNCs, especially those that are US‐based, appear to moderate country‐specific institutional effects on the diffusion of the three HRM bundles.     

Position limits for cash‐settled derivative contracts

Cash settlement of derivative contracts makes them susceptible to manipulation by traders who expect to close large positions upon final settlement. Cash settlement also increases underlying volatility when hedgers unwind their hedges if they have no incentives to control their trading costs. Limits on the positions that traders can carry into final settlement can be used to mitigate associated economic inefficiencies when surveillance is insufficient. This article develops a model that regulators can use to set these limits that is based upon microstructure theory. The empirical findings indicate that existing position limits are largely inconsistent with those suggested by the model. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 25:945–965, 2005     

Indonesian Local Government Spending,Taxing and Saving: An Explanation of Pre‐ and Post‐decentralization Fiscal Outcomes*

As a result of Indonesia's decentralization program, local governments have gained significantly more responsibility for service delivery, considerably larger fiscal resources, and much greater authority over the use of those resources than before. The present paper develops a simple budget model to describe and explain the substantial differences in pre‐ and post‐decentralization local government fiscal behavior related to spending, taxing and saving. During the post‐decentralization period special attention is paid to the fiscal behavior of natural resource rich regions. Among other things, the evidence suggests that: post‐decentralization local government spending is partly responsive to increasing needs and partly the subject of elite capture; local government taxation has become more aggressive under decentralization and appears to be mostly driven by local bureaucratic expectations related to routine overhead budgets; and the increased savings of local governments during the post‐decentralization period is determined to a large degree by delayed central government transfer payments.     

Regulating B2B online reverse auctions through voluntary codes of conduct

In response to real and perceived abuse by market makers, buyers, and sellers, some industry trade groups representing suppliers have developed voluntary codes of conduct, white papers, and other forms of guidance for online reverse auction participants. The intent of these guidelines is to improve both the reverse auction process and relationships between buyers and sellers. This paper examines the rationale for creating guidelines and codes of conduct, and examines their efficacy in regulating reverse auctions to achieve improved outcomes for market makers, buyers, and sellers. Data from primary and related secondary sources indicate that industry-specific codes of conduct and guidelines have not had a favorable impact.     

Centre-State Resource Allocation in India: A Suggestive Mathematical Approach

Journal of Quantitative Economics - The paper tries to apply a new technique — the decomposition principle — to centre state financial relations in India. As, appropriate data are not...     

Should Chinese Local Governments Be Allowed to Issue Bonds?

I.IntroductionDespite China’s impressive economic growth,its fiscal sustainability has increasinglybecome one of the most watched risk indicators facing the economy.Although China’sexplicit national debtto GDP ratio israther manageable by theOECD standard,at about20 percent of GDP,given its small share of tax revenue to GDP,currently at18.5percent ofGDP,this fiscalsystem may stumble upon major challenges in themedium to long term ifChina’slargecontingent fiscal liabilitiesare als…     

When and how should infant industries be protected?

This paper develops and analyzes a welfare maximizing model of infant industry protection. The domestic infant industry is competitive and experiences dynamic learning effects that are external to firms. The competitive foreign industry is mature and produces a good that is an imperfect substitute for the domestic good. A government planner can protect the infant industry using domestic production subsidies, tariffs, or quotas in order to maximize domestic welfare over time. As protection is not always optimal (although the domestic industry experiences a learning externality), the paper shows how the decision to protect the industry should depend on the industry's learning potential, the shape of the learning curve, and the degree of substitutability between domestic and foreign goods.Assuming some reasonable restrictions on the flexibility over time of the policy instruments, the paper subsequently compares the effectiveness of the different instruments. Given such restrictions, the paper shows that quotas induce higher welfare levels than tariffs. In some cases, the dominance of the quota is so pronounced that it compensates for any amount of government revenue loss related to the administration of the quota (including the case of a voluntary export restraint, where no revenue is collected). In similar cases, the quota may even be preferred to a domestic production subsidy.     

DEFAULT RISK AND DIVERSIFICATION: THEORY AND EMPIRICAL IMPLICATIONS

Recent advances in the theory of credit risk allow the use of standard term structure machinery for default risk modeling and estimation. The empirical literature in this area often interprets the drift adjustments of the default intensity's diffusion state variables as the only default risk premium. We show that this interpretation implies a restriction on the form of possible default risk premia, which can be justified through exact and approximate notions of "diversifiable default risk." The equivalence between the empirical and martingale default intensities that follows from diversifiable default risk greatly facilitates the pricing and management of credit risk. We emphasize that this is not an equivalence in distribution, and illustrate its importance using credit spread dynamics estimated in Duffee (1999) . We also argue that the assumption of diversifiability is implicitly used in certain existing models of mortgage-backed securities.