The European Union's accounting policy analyzed from an ethical perspective: The case of petroleum resources,prospecting and evaluation

This article uses Habermasian philosophy as a reading grid to understand the eminently political aspect of international accounting standard-setting. We specifically analyze the accounting regulations specific to the exploration for and the evaluation of mineral resources in the European context. The rise of the IASC and its successor, the IASB, favors the emergence of a new phase in accounting standard-setting, with a shift from a ruling logic to regulations that put the economic and social actors at the forefront of the negotiations. This change is particularly obvious in the notorious exception allowed by IFRS 6 (Exploration for and evaluation of mineral resources) exempting applicants from paragraphs 10–12 of the IAS 8. This example allows us to question the legitimacy of international accounting standardization and the ethical problems it poses.     

Adverse selection costs for NASDAQ and NYSE after decimalization

NYSE and NASDAQ completed their decimalization on January 29, 2001 and on April 9, 2001 respectively. In this paper, we compare adverse selection component of the bid–ask spread for NASDAQ and NYSE stocks after decimalization using the data from May 2001 and July 2001. We find that the adverse selection component of the bid–ask spread is significantly lower on NASDAQ than on NYSE, and these differences cannot be attributed to the differences in the characteristics of the stocks traded in the two markets. In addition, we find that the adverse selection costs increase with trade size on NYSE, however there is no monotonic pattern observed for NASDAQ stocks. Lastly, we report that although the order flows arrived in the two markets are significantly different, they can at best explain a small portion of the observed differences in adverse selection costs.