An environmental performance index for products reflecting damage costs

Several studies have demonstrated how to use DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) based techniques to estimate environmental performance indices. None of these studies, however, are taking information on the environmental damage costs of the pressure types considered into account. This study is bridging a gap between environmental indices founded in physical pressures and damage costs founded in welfare economics. The aim of the paper is twofold: first, to demonstrate how to implement the information on environmental damage costs within a DEA based environmental performance index, and second, to estimate these indices at product level by using Danish input-output data and environmental data from 1997.     

Accounting Policy Disclosures and Analysts' Forecasts

Using an international sample, I investigate whether the extent of firms' disclosure of their accounting policies in the annual report is associated with properties of analysts' earnings forecasts. Controlling for firm‐ and country‐level variables, I find that the level of accounting policy disclosure is significantly negatively related to forecast dispersion and forecast error. In particular, I find that accounting policy disclosures are incrementally useful to analysts over and above all other annual report disclosures. These findings suggest that accounting policy disclosures reduce uncertainty about forecasted earnings. I find univariate but not multivariate support for the hypothesis that accounting policy disclosures are especially helpful to analysts in environments where firms can choose among a larger set of accounting methods.     

Consumer Ownership in Liberalized Electricity Markets. The Case of Denmark

The continuation of consumer ownership has been an important part of the Danish electricity reform from 1999. Consumer ownership refers to either a consumer co-operative or a municipal utility. Contrary to conventional wisdom, consumer ownership can be supported by solid arguments from modern economic theory of organization. These arguments are presented and confronted with both present and future situation in Denmark. The development of the electricity supply industry after the Second World War has emptied consumer ownership of much of its original content. Nowadays, most consumers consider their electric utility as the (monopoly) supplier of a good they demand and not as something they own. Therefore, obligatory consumer ownership as specified in the new Danish Electricity Act of 1999 cannot be relied on to guarantee security of supply and reasonable prices for small consumers     

Book Review

Book Review

Book Review     

Environmental quality and welfare effects of improving the reporting capability of citizen monitoring schemes

Public participation in environmental monitoring to alert regulators to possible non-compliance events has been credited with improving environmental quality and regulatory efficiency. At the same time, the reporting capability of such citizen monitoring schemes is known to be limited due to technical and organizational deficiencies. Recent enthusiasm for outside interventions that address these deficiencies in order to lower environmental harm and raise overall welfare therefore seems justified. A game-theoretic analysis of a monitoring and enforcement regime with citizen monitoring shows, however, that the effects of such interventions are likely to be subtle. A higher reporting capability of citizens involves substitution effects that have ambiguous effects on the regulator??s monitoring and enforcement costs: Welfare can actually decline and environmental improvements will fall short of expectations. In an extreme scenario we show that improved citizen monitoring can even have adverse effects on environmental quality.     

Blockholder Exit Threats and Financial Reporting Quality

Recent theoretical and empirical studies suggest that blockholders (shareholders with ownership ≥ 5 percent) exert governance through the threat of exit. Blockholders have strong incentives to gather private information and sell their shares when managers are perceived to underperform. To prevent blockholders from selling their shares and the firm from suffering a stock price decline, managers align their actions with the interests of shareholders. As a result of the greater manager‐shareholder alignment, managers' actions are more likely to be in shareholders' best interest, and consequently there is less need for managers to manipulate earnings. Consistent with these predictions from economic theory, we find evidence that as exit threat increases, firms have higher financial reporting quality. Theory also predicts that the impact of blockholders' exit threat on financial reporting quality (FRQ) should increase as the manager's wealth is tied more closely to the stock price, and this is what we find. Our study contributes to the research on the impact of shareholders on FRQ and to an emerging literature on the impact of blockholders in financial markets. Blockholders play an important role in managers' reporting outcomes through their actions as informed investors.     

Ein simulationsbasierter Renditevergleich von fondsgebundenen Altersvorsorgeprodukten

The demographic change and its consequences forces citizens of Germany to realign towards private insurance products. This decision should be based on structured analyses. Most recent studies were inconclusive regarding this decision.As investments are commonly compared using average developments of the underlying, the possibility to switch the underlying during the duration of the investment, they are not represented accordingly and therefore bias the results of the calculation. We perform a thorough simulation analysis to compare two competing investments for retirement provisions while respecting additional costs and tax implications of switching.Without any switching the evaluation of other studies is generally verified (pure investment beats insurance product). But as soon as switching is implemented the tax advantage of insurance products is overcompensating the cost advantage of a pure investment solution. Further research should aim in this direction.     

Risk perception and risk management in Norwegian aquaculture

This exploratory study seeks to provide empirical knowledge about fish farmers' risk attitudes, risk sources and risk management tools by presenting the results from a survey among Norwegian fish farming companies. The results show that fish farmers think of themselves as only moderately risk averse compared, for instance, to crop and livestock farmers. The most important sources of risk are considered to be future salmon prices, institutional risks and fish diseases, while keeping costs low is the most important risk management tool.     

Voluntary management earnings forecasts and discretionary accruals: evidence from Danish IPOs

This paper seeks to determine whether Danish managers exercise discretionary accruals to reach earnings forecast targets they voluntarily specify in conjunction with initial public offerings (IPOs). Because the Danish accounting and legal environment is more permissive than the US, we use Denmark as a natural laboratory for learning how business would occur without strict rules, enforcement and sanctions. Danish managers often volunteer pro forma financial statements for results that are expected to occur subsequent to the IPO. We examine a sample of 58 Danish firms that issue voluntary management earnings forecasts in connection with IPOs that occur between 1984 and 1996. The evidence we uncover strongly suggests that pre-managed earnings are adjusted toward these targets. In contrast with Kasznik's (1999 Kasznik, R. (1999). On the association between voluntary disclosure and earnings management. Journal of Accounting Research, 37: pp. 57–81 [Google Scholar]) results related to voluntarily forecasting American firms, managers of Danish firms exercise discretionary accruals to mitigate earnings forecast errors regardless of whether pre-managed earnings are less, or greater, than the IPO forecast amount.