Economic design of one-sided screening procedures based on a correlated variable with all parameters unknown

Summary Economic design of one-sided screening procedures for improving outgoing product quality based on a screening variable is considered for the case with all parameters unknown. It is assumed that the performance and screening variables are jointly normally distributed and that costs are incurred by screening inspection, acceptance of an imperfect item, and disposition of a rejected one. A method for finding optimal cutoff value based on the predictive distribution is presented.     

Cardinality-based equality of opportunities

We study possible rankings of opportunity profiles. An opportunity profile is a list of opportunity sets, one for each agent in the society. We compare profiles on the basis of the notion of “equality of opportunities”. Our main results show the necessary and sufficient conditions for this comparison to be made using exclusively the information provided by two cardinal measures: the number of common alternatives in all sets of a given profile and the difference between the number of alternatives in the individual sets. We also show that, under additional axioms, we can combine these criteria only in a weighted procedure or in some lexicographic refinements of a weighted procedure.      

The use of the postal questionnaire in accounting history research

This methodological article discusses the first project in accounting history to use the postal questionnaire as a research tool. The historical context was the changing nature of the company audit in Britain, and this article outlines the process by which the questionnaire was devised, the stages through which the project developed, the data that were collected, and how these were analysed and interpreted. A significant innovation was to sample, in equal proportions, accountants who qualified in each decade from the 1920s and 1930s down to the 1980s, and direct the questioning toward their early training and careers, thereby generating historical trends in the responses. Some of the results of the survey are given here by way of illustrating the weaknesses and strengths/costs and benefits of the technique in comparison with oral history and traditional documentary sources.     

Mechanisms for controlling expenditure in the Spanish Royal Household, c.1561-c.18081

The purpose of this article is to examine the accounting and auditing in the Spanish Royal Household between 1561 and 1808. The Royal Household was the third most important item of expenditure that the State Treasury financed, after the Army and Navy and the National Debt. On studying spending control in the Royal Household, we have rejected the idea, often advanced by historiography, that there was no spending control within this institution. On the contrary, treasurers and accountants were only able to release funds for expenditure purposes on the basis of prior authorization. However, the efficiency of spending control was very limited due to technical, administrative and, above all, social and political elements.     

Memory recall errors in retrospective surveys: A reverse record check study

This paper reports on a study to compare self-reports during an interview with staff who attended a University health centre in Turkey, with the records of visits to the same health centre over the previous 12 months. Design of the study reflects the effects of importance of the event, duration since the event, frequency of the occurrence of the event, measurement scale of the event, and bounded and unbounded recalling. In order to assess the extent of recall error, responses to retrospective questions on health centre visits are compared with administrative records. Statistical models are proposed for short and long term human memory recall error effects on responses.     

CPA审计质量评价体系研究

随着以“安然”、“世通”为代表的国内外一系列的财务造假舞弊案的曝光,CPA的审计质量也成为社会各界关注的焦点,人们对CPA的审计质量、甚至CPA行业的信誉和存在的必要都提出了质疑。本文对社会关注的焦点——CPA审计质量进行研究,运用规范研究的方法,对影响我国CPA审计质量的诸因素进行分析,从被审计单位、事务所、CPA、审计收费、审计过程等方面展开分析,并构建了针对CPA审计质量进行评价和衡量的体系,以量化的方式来反映审计质量,并就这一提出了自己的观点和看法。     

无形资产审计的构想与评价

随着知识经济的发展,无形资产的比重呈现出越来越大的趋势。因此,审计部门应重视无形资产的审计。对企业来说,无形资产是可持续发展的重要基础,是企业潜在的巨大财富。面对无形资产管理不规范,国有企业无形资产流失的现状,需要重视无形资产审计。无形资产审计内容包括无形资产战略审计、无形资产重点审计、无形资产效益审计、无形资产管理审计。     

Non-commitment in performance evaluation and the problem of information distortions

Auditing is modeled in a sequential game without commitment. The manager must decide whether and where to audit a worker's output, taking into account all interim information he has obtained. The worker will work just hard enough (and show it) to divert the manager from making an audit or cover up, withholding information about his work to make an audit more difficult. This usually raises the costs of setting work incentives, so incentives are softened, sometimes drastically. Moreover, when a worker's on-the-job information is valuable for entrepreneurial decisions, work incentives must be softened to improve the internal flow of information.     

Estimation methods for stochastic volatility models: a survey

Abstract.  Although stochastic volatility (SV) models have an intuitive appeal, their empirical application has been limited mainly due to difficulties involved in their estimation. The main problem is that the likelihood function is hard to evaluate. However, recently, several new estimation methods have been introduced and the literature on SV models has grown substantially. In this article, we review this literature. We describe the main estimators of the parameters and the underlying volatilities focusing on their advantages and limitations both from the theoretical and empirical point of view. We complete the survey with an application of the most important procedures to the S&P 500 stock price index.     

高校经济合同审计工作的探索

随着社会改革的不断深入和经济的高速发展，各高校对基础设施和教学科研等的资金投入也相应大幅度增加，需要签订的经济合同也越来越多。如何在复杂的环境中做好经济合同审计工作，成为高校审计人员在审计工作中遇到的新课题。