Politics, Processes and the Future of Australian Accounting Standards

The perspective of public interest and interest group theories of regulation is adopted to consider the future of Australian accounting standards following major reforms proposed by the Australian Commonwealth government as part of its 1997 Corporate Law Economic Reform Program (CLERP). Interest groups in the Australian environment are identified. Their lobbying had influenced the initial proposals; and their reactions when the CLERP proposals were published resulted in substantial modifications to the CLERP proposals, which had initially recommendedthat International Accounting Standards (IASs) be adopted as national standards from 1 January 1999.
The role of accounting standards and the structure of standard setting are explored. The political nature of standard setting is illustrated through a review of the CLERP proposals, submissions of various interest groups and the government's responses to them. The central arguments are that key assumptions underlying the CLERP proposals are flawed, and that the CLERP proposals could not achieve the outcomes desired of them.
It seems inevitable, however, that international standards eventually will supplant domestic standards. In the longer term, Australian standard setters seem destined to have a diminished role in the international standard setting arena.     

Management of the political imperative in international business

In this paper we develop a framework for analyzing the political imperative. We argue that the effects of the political imperative on the firm will be a function of industry structure. Strategies that management employs in coping with the political imperative are a function of its impact on the firm and the firm's strategic predisposition. We also speculate on why strategic predisposition may lead firms to employ strategies that are not responsive to the demands of the political imperative.     

传统EDA公司面临冲击

将硬件设计工作“隔墙”扔给软件部门完成的日子是否要最终结束呢?如果英国牛津郡Celoxica公司提供的工具能够流行起来的话,这一天也许就将来临。到目前为止,Celoxica公司的绝大部分业务仍然来自其最大的几个客户,像半导体领域的富士通,这家公司使用Celoxica的工具进行原型芯片的设计以发现芯片的缺陷,在芯片制造之前避免进行昂贵的重新设计。     

MEASURING HOUSEHOLD ACTIVITIES: SOME INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS

This paper focusses on macroeconomic approaches to the measurement of non-market household work or production in industrialised countries. It details the variety of parameters involved, the choice of which depends on the specific aim pursued by authors. A review of different aims pursued, parameters chosen, concepts used, alternative methods applied, and available statistical data is presented and results of evaluations are then compared. The money value of household activities is given in percentage of GNP and comparisons are made within the framework of similar approaches. Under this condition, results are remarkably consistent. At the same time, the paper shows how sensitive results are to the method used; it also puts emphasis on the lack of adequate statistical data which may be held responsible for a gap between the theoretical model of evaluation and its practical implementation. In the present state of knowledge, no definite assertion can be made on the time trend of household work and its money value as percentage of GNP or national income. The paper stresses the importance availability of data on the volume and nature of non-market household output would have for future research on the economic contribution of households in industrialised as well as in developing countries. Such data permitting an output approach to measurement would lead to better understanding of the interrelation between market and household sectors and would therefore improve economic analysis and forecasting. Adequate statistical data could possibly be collected through a process similar to that used for time use data in national surveys.     

Identifying Decision Useful Information with the Matrix Format Income Statement

We conduct an experiment to investigate the potential benefits of an alternative format for the income statement, the matrix format, initially developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and UK Accounting Standards Board in their joint project on performance reporting. Sophisticated financial statement users (financial analysts and professional accountants) and less sophisticated financial statement users (MBA students) were asked to extract information from a set of financial statements that included an income statement either in the IAS 1 format or in the matrix format. We find that the matrix format improves the accuracy with which users extract financial information. This result is driven by greater accuracy, for all user groups, on “below‐the‐line” items. Furthermore, despite lack of familiarity with the matrix format, its use did not appear to affect the time taken, the ease of extracting financial information, or users' task completion confidence; further experience with the matrix format could lead to benefits along these lines as well. Our findings may assist the FASB and IASB in their joint project on financial statement presentation.     

American options and callable bonds under stochastic interest rates and endogenous bankruptcy

A new characterization of the American-style option is proposed under a very general multifactor Markovian and diffusion framework. The efficiency of the proposed pricing solutions is shown to depend only on the use of a viable valuation method for the corresponding European-style option and for the transition density of the model’s state variables. Under a Gauss-Markov stochastic interest rates setup, these new American option pricing solutions are shown to offer a much better accuracy-efficiency trade-off than the approximations already available in the literature. This result is also used to price callable corporate bonds under an endogenous bankruptcy structural approach, by decomposing the option to call or default into a European put on the firm value plus two early exercise premium components.     

The Size of Terroir: A Theoretical Note on Economics and Politics of Geographical Indications

Geographical indications (GI) certify the geographical origins of a product and delineate the specific area in which the certified product must be produced. Despite a large literature on the economics of GIs, few papers have explored the question of the optimal size of GI regions. This note presents a flexible conceptual framework to explore the economics and politics of the delimitation of a GI. The general framework describes the efficiency and distributional effects of the size of a GI and shows how this affects interest groups’ incentives to influence government decision‐making.     

冲浪于"牧本浪潮"

当消费电子浪潮汹涌澎湃之时,企业面临的挑战是选择何种芯片设计战略.