IQ and Audit Quality: Do Smarter Auditors Deliver Better Audits?

This study examines the role of an individual auditor's cognitive ability in delivering high‐quality audits. Our results from analyzing archival data from Sweden show that audit partners' IQ scores obtained from psychological tests are positively associated with going‐concern audit reporting accuracy and audit fee premiums. We also find some, albeit weak, evidence that audit partners' IQ scores are negatively associated with the income‐increasing abnormal accruals of the client. These results suggest that, although audit services are standardized through various control mechanisms and audits are conducted by teams rather than by individual auditors, the cognitive ability of audit partners responsible for an audit remains important in delivering high‐quality audit services.     

Did foreign exchange holding influence growth performance during the global financial crisis?

In a context of increased foreign exchange reserves holding from emerging and developing countries, this paper investigates the diminishing return of reserves holding assumption over the most severe phase of the global financial crisis (2008Q1–2010Q4). Relying on a Panel Smooth Transition Regression model, we highlight the differential effect of the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves for a set of financial vulnerabilities variables. In a specific manner, although reserves accumulation is effective above a critical threshold to cope with vulnerabilities related to the financial channel, we show that it becomes less effective beyond a certain threshold for domestic bank vulnerabilities. Our results are robust to alternative specifications.     

Cover's universal portfolio,stochastic portfolio theory,and the numéraire portfolio

Cover's celebrated theorem states that the long‐run yield of a properly chosen “universal” portfolio is almost as good as that of the best retrospectively chosen constant rebalanced portfolio. The “universality” refers to the fact that this result is model‐free, that is, not dependent on an underlying stochastic process. We extend Cover's theorem to the setting of stochastic portfolio theory: the market portfolio is taken as the numéraire, and the rebalancing rule need not be constant anymore but may depend on the current state of the stock market. By fixing a stochastic model of the stock market this model‐free result is complemented by a comparison with the numéraire portfolio. Roughly speaking, under appropriate assumptions the asymptotic growth rate coincides for the three approaches mentioned in the title of this paper. We present results in both discrete and continuous time.     

IFRS adoption,reporting incentives and financial reporting quality in private firms

This study examines financial reporting quality (FRQ) effects around voluntary International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoptions by German private firms across two important dimensions, earnings quality and disclosure practices. To capture differences in the motivations for IFRS adoptions, we identify four different types of IFRS adopting firms based on a comprehensive set of firm characteristics. We observe earnings quality improvements around IFRS adoptions primarily for one type of firm, which is young, fast growing and seeking access to public equity markets. Using a matched sample of private German GAAP and IFRS reporting firms, we find some evidence suggesting that IFRS also contribute to higher earnings quality. Recognizing that our earnings quality metrics are only incomplete measures of FRQ, we also compare the disclosure practices of IFRS and German GAAP firms. We find that all IFRS firm types disclose significantly more information in their financial reports and show a higher propensity to publish their financial reports voluntarily on the corporate website. Our findings indicate that failure to identify earnings quality changes around IFRS adoption cannot be automatically interpreted as IFRS adoption having no effect on the FRQ of (private) firms. Collectively, our results suggest that both incentives and accounting standards shape private firms’ FRQ.     

Where is the GE? Consumption Dynamics in DSGEs

We offer a partial equilibrium perspective on the behavior of consumption in dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. We consider a benchmark dynamic general equilibrium model and show that a standard calibration implies that the real interest rate is essentially fixed. One manifestation of this feature is that, with separable preferences, the reaction of consumption to total factor productivity (TFP) shocks is flat: the random‐walk permanent income hypothesis holds almost exactly, pretty much as in a partial equilibrium consumption‐savings problem. These results help explain the prominent role of aggregate demand, and how it is achieved, in modern DSGE analysis.     

The European Union preventive restructuring framework: A hole in one?

While traditionally (Continental) Europe has not been known for an in particular debtor‐ or restructuring‐friendly insolvency practice, in recent decades, important reforms were implemented that would foster restructurings in Europe. In this article, we comparatively look a the status quo of insolvency and restructuring practice in five different European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, UK). We place our observations into the context of the preventive restructuring directive, to be implemented within the next two years after its publication on 26 June 2019. The directive leaves quite some room implementation, from a watered‐down restructuring tool with high access threshold to a pre‐insolvency debtor‐friendly US‐style restructuring procedure.     

Interest rates,inflation, and the Fisher effect in China

The paper estimates the relationship between the nominal Treasuries rate and inflation in China. The dynamic econometric analysis yields a preferred, automatically reduced, empirical model revealing a Fisher effect. But the results are sensitive to using different sub-samples encompassed in the decade-and-a-half period following the disassociation of Treasuries from the People’s Bank of China administered interest rates at the end of the 1990s.     

Towards the Development of a Tax System Complexity Index

Reducing tax system complexity is a common goal amongst policymakers; yet there is no commonly agreed definition of complexity. This paper seeks to fill this gap, by proposing the construction of an index of tax system complexity, conceived as a summary indicator of the overall complexity of a tax system at a particular point in time. If adopted, such an index would not only enable assessment of the changing level of a country's tax system complexity over time, but may also facilitate comparisons of the relative complexity of different countries' tax systems in future.     

Will elders provide for their grandchildren? Unconditional cash transfers and educational expenditures in Bolivia

We take advantage of repeated cross‐sectional household surveys and a sharp discontinuity created by the introduction of an unconditional cash transfer to elders in Bolivia, to evaluate its impact on educational expenditures on children within a household. We find positive and significant impacts of the program at the aggregate level. We also find that the program has stronger effects on indigenous populations as well as on female and rural populations. Our results are robust to a series of falsification tests, survey structure, model specification, and estimation methods.     

Using paradata to collect better survey data: Evidence from a household survey in Tanzania

Data are a key component in the design, implementation, and evaluation of economic and social policies. Monitoring data quality is an essential part of any serious, large‐scale data collection process. The purpose of this article is to show how paradata should be used before, during, and after data collection to monitor and improve data quality. To do this we use timestamps, global positioning system (GPS) coordinates, and other paradata collected from an 800‐household survey conducted in Tanzania in 2016. We demonstrate how key paradata can be used during each phase of a research project to identify and prevent issues in the data and the methods used to collect it. Our results corroborate the importance of collecting and analyzing paradata to monitor fieldwork and ensuring data quality for micro data collection in developing countries. Based on these findings we also make recommendations as to how researchers can make better use of paradata in the future to manage and improve data quality. We argue for an expansion in the understanding and use of varied paradata among researchers, and a greater focus on its use for improving data quality.