Cognitive Styles Of Experienced Auditors In The Netherlands

Cognitive styles of decision makers have been studied by a number of researchers over a period of years. Previous research has investigated cognitive styles in relation to information systems design and decision-making variables generally. Studies of cognitive styles in relation to auditor specific decision-making variables have been less common.This paper investigates cognitive styles of practicing auditors in The Netherlands using two well-known psychometric instruments: the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the MacDonald AT-20 Tolerance for Ambiguity instrument (AT-20). The AT-20 has been used previously to investigate auditor individual differences in cognitive styles in relation to audit decision-making tasks (Pincus 1990). The MBTI has not been previously used to investigate auditor cognitive styles. The study described in this paper involved subjects from three auditing firms in The Netherlands. Subjects were presented with an audit case and asked to come to a decision about materiality. Information in the form of financial statements and other financial information was presented to the subjects via a computer program. The subjects selected the information they wanted to view by choosing an item on a menu. The sequence in which they selected information and the amount of time expended in viewing each page of information were recorded by the computer program. After the subjects finished the case, they were asked to complete the two cognitive style instruments (i.e. MBTI and AT-20).Results indicate that there is a preference for Sensing among subjects as measured by the MBTI. This finding is consistent with previous research using the MBTI which indicates that accountants and auditors generally have a preference for the Sensing type of information acquisition. Some differences between auditing firms were observed in regard to cognitive styles and information search variables.     

中国股市反弹有期

【美国《华尔街日报》8月14日】中国股市目前位于19个月来的低点附近。大盘何时才能触底呢？     

Tourism and local economic development. Beyond the conventional view

The relationships between tourism and local economic development extend beyond conventional notions of jobs, diversification and income. The drive for tourism by local authorities and linked agencies, often through the creation of a local action plan, provides a valuable self-appraisal opportunity that may raise the awareness of local economic potentials. Moreover, it also nurtures productive team-building and partnership development within and between local authorities and outside agencies and organisations, and spins off into wider local economic benefits such as image enhancement and the attraction of inward investment. Ultimately, it may boost the local policy machine in ways that enhance and extend the status and strength of the local economy.     

Hayek's Geldtheoretische Untersuchungen: New insights from a 1925–29 typescript

German Ferdinand Tönnies (1855?-?1936) and American Thorstein Veblen (1857?-?1929) are influential figures in the history of the social sciences, whose intellectual relationship has been ignored. However, there are important and illuminating similarities and differences in their critiques of Karl Marx (1818?-?83), as well as in the transition from community to modernity in Western culture and society. This article begins with their account of the nature of the Western community in the Middle Ages and its passage to modernity via the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. It culminates with their critiques of Marx and his and their mutual efforts to construct an ersatz community to replace the one that was lost.     

The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory

The hypothesis of this paper is that a detailed history of a specific location and period is more effective for isolating the important characteristics of institutions than studies which span multiple millennia across the globe. To illustrate this hypothesis, I examine three Italian city-states in the period between eleventh and sixteenth centuries. This was a time when the "commercial revolution" was underway in these city-states. As a result, there were institutional innovations in settlement patterns, work organization, and self-governing institutions to help provide for mutual defense and for the internalization of gains from long-distance trade. I contrast this case study with the methodology and findings employed by Douglass C. North, John J. Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast (2009) in Violence and Social Orders. Rather than analyze the importance of beliefs and the protection of property rights as in prior work of theirs, the authors here focus on the "Schumpeterian competition" between impersonal organizations as an effective institutional form to control violence. Moreover, the timeframe of their book extends to "all recorded human history." In contrast to North, Wallis, and Weingast's approach, I concentrate on Genoa, Florence, and Venice in an effort to explain more effectively the emergence of the public/private divide and the relationship between politics and economics in modern industrial society. Experimentation in medieval Italy in mediating conflict between newly emerging classes, innovating in public finance to support the military, and focusing on broad civic participation in the political process had a lasting impact on the development of the state as an institution.     

Endogenously chosen travel costs and the travel cost model: an application to mountain biking at Moab,Utah

The travel cost model is frequently used to estimate net willingness to pay for recreation at remote sites by using the visitor's travel costs as a proxy for the price of recreation. However, some concern has been raised over the validity of using the visitor's stated travel costs as a proxy for price. This paper addresses some of these concerns, by examining the possible over-estimation of consumer surplus due to endogenously chosen travel costs. This paper extends past theoretical work for the linear model by developing a correction for endogenously chosen travel costs in more commonly used nonlinear models such as the Poisson or count data model. Also provided is the first empirical test of the presence of endogeneity and an estimate of the magnitude of the error from ignoring endogeneity in travel costs. After applying this test and the correction to data that was gathered for mountain biking at Moab, Utah the estimate of consumer surplus falls from US $153 to US $135, which is a 12% reduction.