The Disciplining Role of Accounting in the Long-Run

One role of accounting is to discipline softer (more manipulable) sources of information. We use a principal-agent model of hidden actions and hidden information to study this role. In our model, there is both a verifiable signal (a publicly observed output) and an unverifiable signal (a productivity parameter privately observed by the agent). In a one-period setting, the optimal contract does not make use of the agents report on the private signal. However, when the output is tracked over two periods, the agents communication can be valuable. This reversal of results suggests uncovering the disciplining role of accounting may require a long-term perspective.JEL Classification: D82, M41     

多种多样的新船建造融资方式

船厂建造资金的主要来源是买方提前支付合同价款,其目的是使船厂在建造项目开始时(和在船舶建造的重要阶段)获得充足的流动资金,从而能按合同约定的期限完成船舶建造,交付买方.典型的付款方式是在合同签订后,船舶买主即按合同价支付分期付款的第一笔预付款(例如合同价的10%),其余款项则应在不同的建造阶段予以支付.这些都是船舶交付前的分期付款.合同价的余额(通常为合同价的60%～80%)将在船舶交付时支付,被称为"交船时支付的尾款".     

The five minds of a manager

Managers are told: Be global and be local. Collaborate and compete. Change, perpetually, and maintain order. Make the numbers while nurturing your people. To be effective, managers need to consider the juxtapositions in order to arrive at a deep integration of these seemingly contradictory concerns. That means they must focus not only on what they have to accomplish but also on how they have to think. When the authors, respectively the director of the Centre for Leadership Studies at the University of Exeter in the U.K. and the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, set out to develop a masters program for practicing managers, they saw that they could not rely on the usual MBA educational structure, which divides the management world into discrete business functions such as marketing and accounting. They needed an educational structure that would encourage synthesis rather than separation. Managing, they determined, involves five tasks, each with its own mind-set: managing the self (the reflective mind-set); managing organizations (the analytic mind-set); managing context (the worldly mind-set); managing relationships (the collaborative mind-set); and managing change (the action mind-set). The program is built on the exploration and integration of those five aspects of the managerial mind. The authors say it has proved powerful in the classroom and insightful in practice. Imagine the mind-sets as threads and the manager as weaver. Effective performance means weaving each mind-set over and under the others to create a fine, sturdy cloth.