Compétence et qualité des décisions de vérification*

Résumé. L'auteur étudie l'incidence de la compétence sur la qualité de la prise de décisions de vérification dans le contexte de la planification de la vérification. Contrairement aux chercheurs qui se sont, jusqu'à maintenant, penchés sur cette question, il mesure la compétence par rapport à des champs de connaissances précis. Il évalue la qualité de la prise de décisions de vérification en fonction de trois critères: la conformité aux normes de la profession, la conformité aux normes du cabinet et le degré de consensus parmi les vérificateurs. Dans l'ensemble, les résultats de l'analyse permettent de conclure que la qualité de la prise de décisions, au sens que lui donne l'auteur, est supérieure chez les vérificateurs expérimentés par rapport aux vérificateurs inexpérimentés. Plus particulièrement, il semble, en premier lieu, que les vérificateurs expérimentés comme les vérificateurs inexpérimentés possèdent un bagage de connaissances minimum et se conforment aux normes de la profession. En second lieu, les vérificateurs expérimentés se conforment davantage aux normes du cabinet, tant en ce qui a trait aux décisions relatives à la confiance à accorder au contrôle interne qu'aux décisions de corroboration, ce qui indique que les connaissances des vérificateurs expérimentés seraient plus approfondies que celles des vérificateurs inexpérimentés. Enfin, le degré de consensus chez les vérificateurs expérimentés est supérieur à celui qu'on retrouve chez les vérificateurs inexpérimentés en situation de vérification normale, bien que dans les situations plus inhabituelles, le degré de consensus soit plus faible chez les vérificateurs expérimentés.     

Generalized Tâtonnement and the Solution of Economic Models*

The theoretical literature on tâtonnement processes leads to the conclusion that convergence is guaranteed only urrder fairly restrictive assumptions. Recently, however, large competitive equilibrium models have been successfully solved using algorithms inspired by tâtonnement processes .
This paper stresses the idea that a model builder has more freedom to set up the process than a theoretician, for whom only one assignment of prices to excess demand is reasonable; for computational purposes, any assignment is acceptable. The diagonal dominance criterion provides guidelines to set up such an assignment. It is used to show that even intractable examples of global instability can easily be solved .     

Breaking Collusion in Auctions through Speculation: An Experiment on CO2 Emission Permit Markets

The European Emission Trading Scheme (EU‐ETS) has chosen to adopt an auctioning procedure to initially allocate CO₂ emission permits. Free allocation of permits will become an exception for the third phase (2013–2020) and most firms will have to buy all their permits on the market or via auctions. The ability of bidders to collude is a key concern about the design of the auction format. To counter collusion, the auction can be open to bidders without compliance obligations (speculators). This paper aims at studying experimentally speculation as a collusion‐breaking device in two different auction mechanisms: the uniform‐price sealed‐bid auction and the ascending clock auction. Our results suggest that a uniform sealed‐bid auction open to speculators should be chosen from a revenue maximization point of view. In this mechanism, compliance agents adopt an aggressive strategy toward speculators. This strategy significantly increases the seller's revenue, compared to the more collusive clock auction. In the latter, on the contrary, bidders accommodate speculators, letting them buy permits in the auction and buying their necessary permits on the secondary market. However, as opening the auction to speculators deteriorates efficiency, the regulator faces a trade‐off between these two objectives.     

Index of Consumer Expectations: Food Price Effects and Durable Goods Expenditures

The Index of Consumer Expectations (ICE), which includes expenditures on durable goods, has been adopted as a leading indicator of national economic activity. A rational expectations model of the ICE was developed and the economic determinants of consumers' expectations were estimated. Aggregate expenditures on durable goods were explained by an endogenous ICE and sentiment about current economic conditions. Consumers were more likely to purchase durable goods when they felt better off in the current period relative to the future.     

Housing Tenure Status and Housing Satisfaction

Increased knowledge concerning the determinants of perceived consumer satisfaction with housing would permit a more sensitive response to demand in private markets and in the design of government programs to improve the supply of housing. In this study the probability of reporting satisfaction with housing was examined for those who live in single-family homes, duplexes, apartments and mobile homes and for renters and owners. Findings include: (1) housing characteristics were more important determinants of housing satisfaction than the demographic characteristics of housing occupants, (2) mobile-home dwellers were the least likely to be satisfied with their homes, and (3) apartment and duplex dwellers had similar preferences for housing characteristics.     

Recognition versus Disclosure of Stock Option Compensation: An Analysis of Judgements and Decisions of Nonprofessional Investors*/CONSTATER OU PRÉSENTER PAR VOIE DE NOTE LA RÉMUNÉRATION SOUS FORME D'OPTIONS D'ACHAT D'ACTIONS: UNE ANALYSE DES JUGEMENTS ET DES DÉCISIONS DES INVESTISSEURS NON PROFESSIONNELS

Given the importance of stock options in the aggregate compensation of chief executive officers and other firm employees in the 1990s and early 2000s, the International Accounting Standards Board issued an International Financial Reporting Standard on stock‐based payments on February 19, 2004, requiring that all share‐based payment transactions be recognized at fair value in entities' financial statements. The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants' Accounting Standards Board had already agreed to this principle and amended section 3870 of the CICA Handbook (stock‐based compensation) for financial periods beginning on or after January 1, 2004, making Canada the first major jurisdiction to require all public companies to expense employee stock‐based compensation awards. The revised section eliminated the possibility of disclosing pro forma net income and earnings per share only by way of a note. This research, conducted as a between‐subjects experiment with executive MBA students as nonprofessional investors, examines whether changes in the way stock option compensation is reported (recognition as an expense in the income statement or note disclosure of pro forma net income and earnings per share) affect financial statement users' judgements and investment decisions. Our results indicate that, consistent with the functional fixation hypothesis, the reporting method does indeed significantly influence subjects' judgement of the expected stock price direction, but has no material influence on their investment decisions.