Earnings Management through Specific Accruals and Discretionary Expenses: Evidence from U.S. Agribusiness Firms

This study examines both accruals based earnings management (AEM) and real earnings management (REM) in U.S. agribusinesses. In particular, the focus is on agribusinesses that report low earnings quality, defined as firms with extreme level of accruals compared to their peers. The cross‐sectional modified Jones model (Jones 1991; Dechow et al 1995) is used to test for AEM. To capture REM practices, we implement the discretionary expenses model by Roychowdhury (2006). We find evidence of AEM and find no evidence of REM in agribusinesses. In addition, our results show that managers might be managing earnings through specific accruals doubtful accounts receivable provisions and special items.     

Administración del riesgo crediticio al menudeo en México: una mejora econométrica en la selección de variables y cambios en sus características

The early prediction of bad debtors in revolving loans in Mexico is a relevant current issue. The proposed econometric model of behavioral scoring considers the changes in the characteristics of consolidated clients and produces better results than those obtained with methodology used by the CNBV on provisions. The obtained results show the possibility of replacing the current model, minimizing the expected loss and increasing the ROA of Mexican financial institutions in 2.20% complying the methodology and statistical testing criteria according to the Unique Banking Dispositions and the guidelines of Basel II on credit risk.     

Self-selection and internal migration in the United States

"Within the conceptual framework of the Roy model, this paper provides an empirical analysis of internal migration flows [in the United States] using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The theoretical approach highlights regional differences in the returns to skills: regions that pay higher returns to skills attract more skilled workers than regions that pay lower returns. Our empirical results suggest that interstate differences in the returns to skills are a major determinant of both the size and skill composition of internal migration flows. Persons whose skills are most mismatched with the reward structure offered by their current state of residence are the persons most likely to leave that state, and these persons tend to relocate in states which offer higher rewards for their particular skills."     

Assessing techno-economic alternatives for rural development in Northeast Mexico

In the arid zone of Northeast Mexico are located some of the most socially deprived and economically marginal communities in the nation. This paper analyzes the current status of their social and economic organization and suggests alternative techno-economic subsistence activities that could improve productive capacity while preserving the fragile ecological balance between communities and exploitable natural resources. It shows how recent advances in computer mapping, linear programming, and techno-social modelling (SOPA technique) can assist decision makers and planners in choosing the best mix of social, economic, and technical advantages from an array of scenarios of change. A major finding is that the use of cooperatives as a managerial format is not always the best one to utilize, given the variability of community cohesiveness and varying organizational requirements of different techniques of exploiting animal and plant resources.     

Intermarriage and the Intergenerational Transmission of Ethnic Identity and Human Capital for Mexican Americans

We investigate whether selective intermarriage and endogenous ethnic identification interact to hide some of the intergenerational progress achieved by the Mexican-origin population in the United States. In part, we do this by comparing an "objective" indicator of Mexican descent (based on the countries of birth of the respondent and his parents and grandparents) with the standard "subjective" measure of Mexican self-identification (based on the respondent's answer to the Hispanic origin question). For third-generation Mexican-American youth, we show that ethnic attrition is substantial and could produce significant downward bias in standard measures of attainment which rely on ethnic self-identification.     

Responsibility within civil society and range of urban poverty

The decentralized, subsidiary action of the urban poor within the neighborhood articulates the responsibility of these citizens within the metropolis. This article makes use of the work of J. Habermas, R. Blank, and W.J. Wilson in order to show how such citizen action on the part of the poor can, in the face of devastation, be resistant, communal, located action. Collaborative engagement assists them in coming to their own vision and in determining their world’s material and symbolic framework. In their collaboration and through the resulting interpretive community, they achieve a responsibility which engages them in caring for the future of the common life. Upon the basis of their action from within their neighborhoods, the urban poor, as they rebuild their neighborhoods, move into civil society so that the entire metropolis may benefit.     

水域山新产品全国发布引领中国生态健康产业

6月28日，2011年沙棘生态论坛暨水域山沙棘果汁新产品新闻发布会在北京隆重举行，多名相关领导和行业专家与内蒙古水域山饮品有限责任公司董事长刘志峰、水域山沙棘果汁产品代言人张涵予等出席论坛，一起深入探讨了中国沙棘生态产业的发展现状以及未来趋势，并共同见证了水域山沙棘果汁新产品的全国正式发布，为国内果汁饮料市场以及生态健...     

Legislative organization and congressional review of agency regulations

Although researchers have demonstrated that legislators possessa variety of instruments with which to limit bureaucratic discretion,it is not clear to what extent these instruments are used bylegislators whose preferences are representative of chambermajorities. This article examines the role that committee membership,preferences, and other factors play in legislators' use of congressionalreview, a new instrument through which agency regulations canbe nullified by joint resolutions of disapproval. It uses logisticregression to demonstrate that in the 105th House of Representatives,legislators were more likely to seek to disapprove agency regulationsthe greater the divergence of their preferences from the medianmember of the committee of jurisdiction. Committee membership,however, did not affect the use of congressional review. Theseresults, which diverge from previous research in several respects,underscore that it is not yet possible to draw definitive conclusionsabout the connection between the organization of Congress andlegislative-executive relations that hold across policy areasand instruments of political control.     

Globalization and labour-market adjustment: how fast and at what cost?

In this paper we argue that the flexibility of an economy'slabour market plays a role in determining the gains from tradeliberalization, the level of short-run adjustment costs, andthe relative value of these two measures. To do so, we describethe model introduced in Davidson and Matusz (2000) which allowsus to solve for adjustment costs when workers vary accordingto ability and jobs differ in terms of the skills that theyrequire. We then report results based on simulations of thismodel. We find that economies with sluggish labour markets havethe least to gain from liberalization. The reason is that whilethe removal of trade barriers creates large benefits, they arealmost completely offset by large short-run adjustment costs.In contrast, we find that with either very flexible or veryslothful labour market gains from liberalization are alwayssignificantly larger than the short-run adjustment costs.