Public secrecy in government auditing revisited

This paper returns to the topics raised in Radcliffe (2008) ‘Public Secrecy in Auditing: What government auditors cannot know.’ It presents evidence that Funnel's critique involves misreading and factual error. Crucially, the 2008 paper focuses on the role of the Auditor of State of Ohio; Funnell criticizes the piece as conflating the role of auditor and politician, as he puts it, policy matters “are the democratic right of the elected government to determine not an unelected public servant.” This is in conflict with the institutional detail of the case: as is stated at various points in the paper, the Auditor of State of Ohio is directly elected in partisan political elections, one of the many such state auditor positions in the United States that follow this practice. The office holder during the time in question, James Petro, was a Republican politician elected Ohio's Auditor of State in 1994.This paper goes on to argue that, notwithstanding these matters, it is naïve to argue that auditors are essentially divorced from the world of politics and policy. Instead, auditors work within discursive frameworks of what is possible in ways that are more nuanced and practical. The paper reviews key elements in a stream of related work that draws on history and fieldwork to support this view. The piece closes with discussion of the academic publishing process.     

Does Party Matter? An Historical Test Using Senate Tariff Votes in Three Institutional Settings

This article investigates the historical impact of party andconstituency preferences on tariff votes from the U.S. Senateover the period 1883–1930. We find that the estimatedeffect of party grows during periods in which legislative institutionsfavored strong parties. We conclude that party has a causaleffect on policy. If party serves solely as a proxy for unmeasuredcomponents of personal ideology or constituency preferences,then the estimated effect of party on policy outcomes shouldnot vary contemporaneously with changes in legislative institutions.But if party has an independent causal impact on policy outcomes,then changes in institutions favoring strong parties shouldlead to a greater effect of party on voting behavior, holdingconstituency preferences constant. Although our findings arelimited to votes over tariffs in the 19th and early 20th centuries,they suggest that further research into the mechanism by whichparty affects political decision making is important.     

Firm governance and duopoly: in weakness may lie strength

The paper proposes a model of firm governance when two firms compete in a duopoly. The paper assumes that a motivational asymmetry exists between owners and managers: owners wish to obtain maximum profits, managers wish to maximize sales. Managers perceive that salary, social status or future job prospects are more closely associated with firm size (i.e. sales) than with firm profits. The paper takes an agency view of the firm where owners only indirectly influence the behaviour of firms through the level of control they exert over managers. The paper demonstrates that a weakly governed firm, acting as a sales maximizer, can gain a competitive advantage over a strongly governed firm, acting as a profit maximizer. The paper examines the extent of this advantage under cost leadership and differentiation strategies. The paper also demonstrates that the objectives of profit maximization and maximization of competitive advantage are not necessarily congruent. The paper graphically represents the profit functions of the two firms illustrating the Nash equilibrium under Cournot and Stackelberg conditions. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Accountancy before the fall: The AICPA vision project and related professional enterprises

This paper examines the AICPA Vision Project, understanding this both as a professional project aimed at repositioning the identity and practice of accountants, and as a window into the activities of professional bodies before recent financial scandals and regulatory reform. Archival and interview material is used to analyze the Vision Project and explicate its meaning and significance. The project is understood in terms of work by Giddens and Abbot concerning the development and repositioning of professional claims. The Vision Project may ultimately be seen as a failure, with professional bodies now distancing themselves from the Vision Project’s goals. Nonetheless, the project itself presents an opportunity to understand the mechanics by which professional bodies seek to expand the domain of practice, even if such exceeds the limits of their technical competency.     

Valuing Tullock's Rejects: The Reception of His Work in Rent Seeking

Gordon Tullock's work in economics spans nearly 50 years and is known for the breadth, originality, and quantity of his contributions in public choice, constitutional political economy, law and economics, bioeconomics, and monetary history. Despite his lack of formal training in economics, Tullock published in major economic journals early in his career. A number of his papers, which proved to be seminal to the theory of rent seeking, were rejected by top economic journals. This paper explores possible reasons for the editor's reception to Tullock's work and uses citation counts to value Tullock's rejected papers. My paper shows that Tullock's work continues to be cited, often far more frequently than the papers which journals chose to publish when they rejected Tullock's submissions.     

Estimating and interpreting the local economic benefits of visitor spending: an explanation

Research into the economic impacts of visitor spending on host communities has a long history. While such research has been ‘popular’ with, and useful for, tourism policy makers it has also been subject to questioning by some academic authors in terms of relevance, validity and difficulty of understanding. This paper addresses these questions by detailing and discussing the underlying concept and its translation into practice using, as an example, the data collection, analysis, and results from one study. The objective, in addition to giving an exposition to the nonspecialist reader, is to consider key issues involved in conducting and interpreting the findings of such research.     

The effect of incentives on customer evaluations of service bundles

Effects of service bundle incentives on perceived value, search intentions, and switching intentions are assessed in two independent studies. The first study demonstrates that service bundling influences switching and search intentions through perceived value. Results related to bundle incentives support the salience of the convenience associated with consolidating charges onto one bill. Further analysis reveals that explicit valuation of savings creates higher perceived value than convenience alone; however, search and switching intentions are unaffected by incentives or valuation thereof beyond the convenience effect. A second study replicates key parts of these results. Research and practical implications are discussed.