...Costs and Benefits of Accounting-Based Regulation in Emerging Capital Markets * Current content: Executive Summary * Current content: Introduction * Current content: Costs of Accounting-Based Regulation * Current content: Benefits of Accounting-Based Regulation * Case Study * Making It Happen Executive Summary * Securities regulation is vital to the development of an efficient capital market. * Accounting-based regulation embeds accounting numbers as a threshold. * There are both benefits and costs to accounting-based regulation. * The costs of accounting-based regulation include opportunistic behavior by management to manipulate accounting numbers, and capital resource misallocation. * The benefits of accounting-based regulation include the potential to mitigate resource misallocation by preventing poorly performing firms from entering the market and to avoid “adverse selection problems” by managers. * Recent Chinese regulations on rights offerings and seasoned equity offerings shed light on the costs and benefits of accounting-based regulation in emerging capital markets. Introduction One of the most controversial debates in economic policy is: Should governments intervene in or regulate capital markets? Pure free-marketeers believe that the “invisible hand” can correct all market failures. However, advocates of intervention characterize the regulation process as one in which government intervention corrects market failures and maximizes...
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...FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING INFORMATION AND THE RELEVANCE/IRRELEVANCE ISSUE (Global Business & Economics Review Volume 5 No.2 December 2003 pp:140-175) Stanley C. W. Salvary, Canisius College ABSTRACT Some current research conclude that the numbers in financial statements are not relevant for three basic reasons. The numbers: (1) are not isomorphic with capital market values, (2) do not have a future orientation, and (3) are un-interpretable since they are based upon five different measurement attributes. The lack of isomorphism argument is invalid since actual current performance is not identical with the capital market expectations of future performance. The lack of a future orientation argument is invalid since financial statements capture what has happened and not what is expected to happen. Since a single measurement attribute is required to produce meaningful measures, the un-interpretability argument holds. A unique measurement attribute is identified in this paper to address this problem I. INTRODUCTION In Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts No. 1: Objectives of Financial Reporting by Business Enterprises (SFAC1) [1978], the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) maintains that the function of financial accounting is to generate information useful to a group of users (investors and creditors) for decision-making. The focus on that specific function (decision-making) leads to a concern for predictive value, as opposed to feedback value, in financial statements...
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...Introduction: IFRS are a set of rules developed and issued by IASB (International Accounting Standards Board) which is an independent body based in London, England. These rules will apply uniformly to financial reporting by public entities worldwide. The adoption of IFRS is widespread around the world with 120 countries requiring public corporations to adapt IFRS. Accounting standards as we know are a modern development although its traces date back 500 years. They are very important in today’s world in which the ownership and control of firm are different. The Role of Accounting Standards: Accounting standards are very important for the smooth functioning of capital markets. The managers are better informed than outside parties about the data and performance of the firm. However the outside parties control the capital which they can provide to the firm provided they rest assured about the sound quality of financials of the firm so as to ensure the safety of their capital. The more the safety, the less will be the cost of capital to the firm as the creditors and third parties will demand less rate of return. So the managers need to adhere to accounting standards and get it audited by professional auditors so as to ensure the true and fair picture of business. Hence the accounting standards dictate the allocation of capital in complex capital markets and economies. Benefits of IFRS 3.1 Countries: Different accounting standards are adapted and implemented by different countries due to the...
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...1) Better access to foreign capital markets and investment -Eliminating barriers to cross border investing Accounting information has a significant influences on the behaviour of investors and financial capital markets. The implementation of IFRS for financial reporting in Australia has allowed for better access to foreign capital markets and investment, eliminating barriers to cross border investing. The major benefits include the potential for lesser information asymmetry (Horton, Serafeim and Serafeim, 2012), improved reporting transparency, reduced information costs, increased comparability, accountability and increase in the quality of financial reporting (Ahmed, Neel and Wang, 2013). Therefore markets become more completive and efficient, benefiting investors. A major prospective benefit of implementation of IFRS for financial reporting is the increase in accounting comparability. The enhanced comparability is brought together though increased quality and convergence of accounting standards particularly in areas such as Fair value measurements, business combinations and revenue recognition (Jordan, 2013). The increased comparability hence allows Australian business to facilitate lower costs of capital and have better access foreign capital markets and cross-border investing. On the contrary however comparability may become worse in situations where IFRS implementation is not mandatory and countries have two varying accounting standards. Furthermore the full scope of...
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...Chapter 4 The economics of Financial Reporting Regulation The case for unregulated markets for accounting information * Support for unregulated marketing all relate to the incentives for a firm to report information about itself to owners and to the capital market. * Agency theory explains why incentives exist for voluntary reporting to owners. * Wider voluntary reporting to the capital market is explained by signaling theory * The arguments supporting unregulated markets for accounting information are largely deductive in nature. Agency Theory * Predicts and explains the behavior of parties involved with the firm. * It conceives of the firm itself as a nexus of agency relationship and seeks to understand organizational behavior by examining how parties to agency relationships within the firm maximize their own utility. * One major relationship is between the management group and the owners of the firm. * Managers are hired to administer the firms’ activities. * Owners and Managers may have different goals and may not be in perfect agreement. While owners are interested to maximize return of investment and security prices, managers have a wider range of economic interests and psychological needs. Because of this conflict, owners communicate with managers in such a way as to minimize conflict between the goals of two groups. * Costs relating to monitoring management reduce managers’ compensation. Therefore managers have an...
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...wayne_landsman@unc.edu. May 2010 Forthcoming, European Accounting Review, 2010 We appreciate comments from seminar participants at the Bank of Spain, Rob Bloomfield, Elicia Cowins, Hilary Eastman, Gavin Francis, Christian Kusi-Yeboah, Jim Leisenring, Martien Lubberink, Richard Rendleman, David Tweedie, and an anonymous reviewer. We acknowledge funding from the Center for Finance and Accounting Research at UNC-Chapel Hill and the Stanford Graduate School of Business Center for Global Business and the Economy. Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1601519 How did Financial Reporting Contribute to the Financial Crisis? Abstract We scrutinize the role financial reporting for fair values, asset securitizations, derivatives, and loan loss provisioning played in the Financial Crisis. Because banks were at the center of the Financial Crisis, we focus our discussion and analysis on the effects of financial reporting by banks. We conclude fair value accounting played little or no role in the Financial Crisis. However, transparency of information associated with asset securitizations and derivatives likely was insufficient for investors to assess properly the values and riskiness of bank assets and liabilities. Although the FASB and IASB have taken laudable steps to improve disclosures relating to asset securitizations, in our view, the approach for accounting for securitizations in the IASB’s Exposure Draft that would require banks to recognize...
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...domestic case, accounting is an information service that provides financial information about a domestic entity to domestic users of that information. International accounting is distinctive in that the entity being reported on is either a multinational company with operations and transactions that transcend national boundaries or involves an entity with reporting obligations to readers who are located outside the reporting entity’s country of domicile. 2. Advantage: Some might argue that measurement, disclosure, and external auditing are three distinct (although related) processes, involving different members of the company. For example, corporate attorneys often are involved in disclosure issues, but seldom intervene in measurement issues. The Board of Directors works with the external auditors but not necessarily with the comptroller s office. Thus, discussion of accounting requirements and voluntary accounting choices in different jurisdictions is simplified by focusing on the three components of accounting. Disadvantage: measurement, disclosure and auditing are interdependent, and should not be viewed in isolation of one another. A company choosing to disclose as little as possible, for example, may use accounting measurement approaches that reduce the information content of financial statements, and select an external auditor who will be relatively lenient in enforcing accounting requirements. One alternative classification might include accounting (measurement and...
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...FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE MEASURES AND THEIR EFFECTS By Evanti Firstadea (105020307121003) Rosyida Mardyana (105020307121011) University of Brawijaya Economics and Business Faculty Accounting Major FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE MEASURES AND THEIR EFFECTS INTRODUCTION The primary objective of for-profit organizations is to maximize shareholder (or owner) value, or firm value for short. Thus, the results-control ideal would be to reward each individual employee for doing what s/he does to increase firm value. However, because direct measurements of the individuals’ contributions to value creation are rarely possible, firms have to look for measurement and control alternatives. A commonly cited management axiom is: what you measure is what you get. This axiom works in practice because performance measures are linked to any of a number of incentives that employees value. Employees respond to these incentives. The measures, then, play valuable motivational, or decision influencing, roles. But what performance measure (or measures) should be used? At managerial levels of organizations, both at the corporate and entity levels, job responsibilities are both broad and varied. In common jargon, managers are said to be multitasking. Reflecting that task variety, the list of measures used in practice to motivate and evaluate managers’ performances is long. However, these measures can be classified into three broad categories. Two of these categories include summary, single-number,...
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...Research Study Capital-Market Effects of Corporate Disclosures and Disclosure Regulation Christian Leuz Peter Wysocki June 26, 2006 Commissioned by the Task Force to Modernize Securities Legislation in Canada Christian Leuz Christian Leuz is currently the Professor of Accounting at the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business. He is also the David G. Booth Faculty Fellow. Prior to this position, Professor Leuz was the Harold Stott Term Assistant Professor in Accounting at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Fellow at Wharton’s Financial Institution Center. His research interests include transparency and corporate governance, financial disclosure and securities regulation, and the links between the institutions of market economies. Professor Leuz earned his doctoral degree and “Habilitation” at the Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany. His most recent publications have appeared in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Accounting and Economics and the Journal of Accounting Research. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Accounting and Economics and serves currently on the Editorial Board of The Accounting Review, the Journal of Accounting Research, the Journal of Business, Finance and Accounting, and the International Journal of Accounting. He has received several grants and honors, of which the Geewax Terker Prize is the latest. Peter Wysocki Professor Peter Wysocki is an associate professor of management at...
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...How did Financial Reporting Contribute to the Financial Crisis? Mary E. Barth & Wayne R. Landsman a a b Graduate School of Business , Stanford University , Stanford, CA, USA b Kenan–Flagler Business School , University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , Chapel Hill, NC, USA Published online: 07 Jul 2010. To cite this article: Mary E. Barth & Wayne R. Landsman (2010) How did Financial Reporting Contribute to the Financial Crisis?, European Accounting Review, 19:3, 399-423, DOI: 10.1080/09638180.2010.498619 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09638180.2010.498619 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the...
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...Accounting Horizons Vol. 24, No. 3 2010 pp. 355–394 American Accounting Association DOI: 10.2308/acch.2010.24.3.355 Global Accounting Convergence and the Potential Adoption of IFRS by the U.S. (Part I): Conceptual Underpinnings and Economic Analysis Luzi Hail, Christian Leuz, and Peter Wysocki SYNOPSIS: This article is Part I of a two-part series analyzing the economic and policy factors related to the potential adoption of IFRS by the United States. In this part, we develop the conceptual framework for our analysis of potential costs and benefits from IFRS adoption in the United States. Drawing on the academic literature in accounting, finance, and economics, we assess the potential impact of IFRS adoption on the quality and comparability of U.S. reporting practices, the ensuing capital market effects, and the potential costs of switching from U.S. GAAP to IFRS. We also discuss the compatibility of IFRS with the current U.S. regulatory and legal environment, as well as the possible macroeconomic effects of IFRS adoption. Our analysis shows that the decision to adopt IFRS mainly involves a cost-benefit trade-off between ͑1͒ recurring, albeit modest, comparability benefits for investors; ͑2͒ recurring future cost savings that will largely accrue to multinational companies; and ͑3͒ one-time transition costs borne by all firms and the U.S. economy as a whole, including those from adjustments to U.S. institutions. In Part II of the series ͑see Hail et al. 2010͒, we provide an analysis...
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...QUESTION ONE-ACCOUNTING REGULATION 16 Three Theories of Regulation 1: Public interest theory The central economic rationale for origins of government intervention with public interest theory is that of market failure. Public interest theory assumes that economic markets are subject to a series of market imperfections or transaction failures, which if left uncorrected will result in both inefficient and inequitable outcomes. 2: Regulatory Capture Theory Capture theory assumes that all members of society are economically rational -and each will pursue his/her self interest to the point where marginal benefit from lobbying regulators just equals private marginal cost. Therefore people lobby for regulations that increase their wealth, or they lobby to ensure that regulations are ineffective in decreasing their wealth. 3: Private Interest Theory Stigler’s private interest theory – he argues that regulatory activity reflects the relative political power between interest groups. Interaction is with politicians who are not neutral arbiters but are like business executives or consumers - and are thus rationally self interested. Private interest theories favour producer groups as the most likely to become organised interest groups. Theorists believe that regulation does not arise as a result of a government‘s response to public demands – it is sought by the producer private interest group - and is designed and operated primarily for its benefit. QUESTION TWO –ACCOUNTING THEORY...
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...The Australasian Accounting Business & Finance Journal, February 2007 Gaffikin: Accounting Research and Theory: the age of neo-empiricism. Vol. 1, No.1.pp. 1-19. Accounting Research and Theory: The age of neo-empiricism Michael Gaffikin, School of Accounting & Finance, University of Wollongong ABSTRACT The theorising in accounting prior to 1970 was rejected as not providing sufficiently general theories. Informed by theories in economics and finance (and other disciplines such as psychology) and with the aid of computers, attempts to theorise accounting took a new direction. Large data collection and analysis emphasized a purportedly more systematic empirical approach to developing theory. Key words: accounting; neo-empiricism; capital markets research; behavioural finance; efficient markets hypothesis; positive accounting theory INTRODUCTION Around 1970 there was a dramatic change in the approach to accounting research. Several reasons have been suggested for this change in methodological direction by those reviewing the development of accounting thought. To many, a major distinction is a change in direction away from attempts to prescribe a theory of accounting to developing theory from a description of extant practices. To advocates of the latter, previous attempts to develop a theory of accounting were futile as there could never be agreement over many of the inputs into a theory such as the postulates, principles but most specifically the assumptions. Although a...
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...The contribution of IFRS to UK accounting standards Name Institutional Affiliation INTRODUCTION International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are principles based on standards and the interpretations implemented by the Board of International Accounting Standards as the global financial reporting framework. IFRS are guidelines and definitions that require to be applied in the preparation of financial statements by the international companies. Before IFRS was referred to as International Accounting Standards (IAS), then in 2001 the board of the international accounting standards (IASB) took the control of setting the IAS. Then the IASB developed the standard known as IFRS. According to (Shim, Siegel, Shim & Shim, 2012), the designing of IFRS is done as a common language to be used by business affairs so that the accounts of the company are comparable and understandable across the international boundaries. They result from the rapidly growing trade and international shareholding, and they offer best solutions to the companies trading in several countries. Many different national accounting standards are progressively being replaced by the IFRS. They provide set rules to be followed by the accountants in the provision and maintenance of the accounts books which are reliable, comparable, relevant and understandable as per the users external and internal. IFRS was adopted in the UK in 2005, and all the public companies were required to use the IFRS policies for...
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...Environment Role of Financial Reporting • Financial statements and financial reporting • Accounting and capital allocation •Stakeholders Objective of Financial Reporting •Management bias •Users’ needs Standard Setting • Need to develop standards • Parties involved in standard setting • Standard setting in a political environment GAAP • GAAP hierarchy •Professional judgement • Role of ethics Challenges Facing Financial Reporting • Globalization of companies and capital markets • Impact of technology • Changing nature of the economy • Increased requirement for accountability 2 The Canadian Financial Reporting Environment Role of Financial Reporting • Financial statements and financial reporting • Accounting and capital allocation •Stakeholders Objective of Financial Reporting •Management bias •Users’ needs Standard Setting • Need to develop standards • Parties involved in standard setting • Standard setting in a political environment GAAP • GAAP hierarchy •Professional judgement • Role of ethics Challenges Facing Financial Reporting • Globalization of companies and capital markets • Impact of technology • Changing nature of the economy • Increased requirement for accountability 3 Characteristics of Accounting 1. Identification, measurement, and communication of financial information about; 2. Economic entities to; 3. Interested persons. 4 Financial Reporting • Financial accounting provides historical information • Financial reporting is used by both internal and external...
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