Innovation activity in branches of Russia’s agroindustrial sector

The main directions in developing the innovation processes in key branches of the agroindustrial sector of the Russian Federation in the modern Russian economy are considered. The role of the state creating a modern innovation system is presented, as well as activation of scientific research into the agroindustrial sector.     

The supply of and demand for accounting information

The article analyzes the use of accounting information in Russia. We assess reporting behaviour in the lending process for a sample of Russian companies in the years 1999–2004 and postulate that Russian companies manage their earnings in order to avoid showing losses when applying for bank financing. Once a credit has been granted, companies are predicted to manage earnings because of the bank's monitoring activities. By means of univariate and multivariate analysis we are able to attribute the discontinuity around a zero target in the earnings distribution with firms’ response to the banks’ assessment of accounting performance. This implies that financing considerations affect the reporting incentives of Russian companies.     

Problems of food security in Russia

The principal problems of food security in the Russian Federation are reviewed in the article. Significant attention is paid to the analysis of the existing material and technical base of the agriculture, the location and specialization of the regions, energy conservation, and import substitution.     

Asymmetric trading by insiders – comparing abnormal returns and earnings prediction in Spain and Australia

This paper examines whether the ‘external governance’ imposed by comparative financial accounting standards reduces the trading advantage of insiders. We do this by directly comparing insider trading returns and insider’s ability to predict future earnings from accruals in Spain and Australia. Results show higher excess returns and greater prediction of future earnings from conditioned insider trading in Australia that is then utilized by financial analysts to lower forecast errors – particularly in contrarian‐based accruals trading. Possible explanations include: (i) a high asymmetric quality for market‐based accruals, (ii) information transfer from informed insiders to uninformed insiders and financial analysts and (iii) a more timely dissemination of financial information in Spain through different ownership and governance structures.     

Fair value and audit fees

This paper investigates the effect of fair value reporting and its attributes on audit fees. We use as our primary sample the European real estate industry around mandatory IFRS adoption (under which reporting of property fair values becomes compulsory), due to its unique operating and reporting characteristics. We document lower audit fees for firms reporting property assets at fair value relative to those employing depreciated cost—a difference that appears driven, in part, by impairment tests that occur only under depreciated cost. We further find that audit fees are decreasing in firms’ exposure to fair value and increasing both in the complexity of the fair value estimation and for recognition (versus only disclosure) of fair values. We corroborate our findings in two alternative settings: contrasting UK and US real estate firms and using UK investment trusts. Overall, the results suggest that fair values can lead to lower monitoring costs; however, any reductions in audit fees will vary with salient characteristics of the fair value reporting, including the difficulty to measure and the treatment within the financial statements.     

Legislative demands and economic realities: Company and group accounts compared

In many countries, not only one but several sets of accounts have to be prepared and disclosed by (holding) companies. This paper investigates the possibly different economic functions of these sets of accounts by looking at the German dual financial reporting system, in which company (single) and group (consolidated) accounts have to be published. Using a large number of accounting- and market-based metrics, we test whether single and group accounts display different properties and—if so—whether this finding can be explained by different economic roles played by both sets of accounts. Indeed, properties are found to differ. However, there is no evidence for single accounts being equally or more useful than group accounts in valuation and contracting. There is also no evidence that single accounts play a superior role in determining future dividend payouts or predicting default probabilities. Moreover, single accounts do not play an incremental role in fulfilling these functions either. Our results indicate that the factual role of single accounts is to provide the basis to compute taxable income. We do not consider this an economic function in its own right but, rather, as a legal requirement that can possibly be achieved by less costly means.     

Stale and Scale Effects in Markets-Based Accounting Research: Evidence from the Valuation of Dividends

Abstract

This study revisits prior research on the valuation of dividends in an accounting-based valuation framework. Using a battery of tests, we show that market value deflation is essential in market-based tests of dividend displacement and signalling because it controls for ‘stale’ information in addition to scale (size) differences across firms. For US firms, we show that after controlling for ‘stale’ information, the empirical association between dividends and market values switches from positive to negative. This switch is not explained by scale differences across firms. Further, we show that after controlling for staleness, the valuation of dividends remains positive for European firms. This result is explained by the relatively stronger association of dividends with future earnings in these settings (i.e. signalling). Lastly, our country-specific estimates of dividend valuation provide a potentially valuable index for studies aimed at examining the effects of accounting and securities regulation on information asymmetries in an international context.     

Perfecting the structure of the Russian food industry

Important problems and trends in the restructuring of major processing industries of the Russian Federation’s food complex at the current stage of creating an effective market economy are discussed.     

ON THE EXISTENCE OF THE ENDOGENOUS MORTGAGE RATE PROCESS

The mortgage rate is a major factor in the refinancing decision. The refinancing behavior influences cash flow and, therefore, mortgage price. The prices of mortgage instruments drives the mortgage rates. We consider a problem of the existence of a dynamic mortgage rate process which resolves this circular dependence. The existence is proved by constructing a solution using a newly proposed level set method.     

Computing the endogenous mortgage rate without iterations

A number of mortgage prepayment models require a specification of the mortgage rate process. Usually, ad-hoc models are used (e.g., a Treasury yield plus some constant). Recently, a number of papers have appeared where the authors have utilized a mortgage rate implied by the current yield curve (the so-called endogenous mortgage rate). However, the existing computational algorithms suffer from the curse of dimensionality and, consequently, are problematic to use for full-scale problems. A computational algorithm, proposed in this paper, is tractable in the sense that its complexity is equivalent to the problem of mortgage valuation. Moreover, the algorithm does not require iterations. The numerical example is based on a PDE computation. An implementation of a Monte Carlo method is also discussed.