Thesis (doctoral)-Universität, Mannheim, 2004.-

Thesis (doctoral)-Universität, Mannheim, 2004.-

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2007. / Description based on contents viewed Oct. 5, 2007; title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references (p. 136-147).

Les deux études menées dans cette thèse portent sur les questions de recherche liées aux objectifs des normes comptables internationales les plus importants : la comparabilité, la transparence et la qualité de l'information comptable. La première étude étudie la comparabilité de l'information comptable en ce qui concerne le secret et la divergence avant l'adoption. Dans cette étude, on prétend qu'il est facile de prévoir si l'adoption des IFRS améliore la réaction du marché des concurrents autour des annonces de revenus d'une entreprise donnée. Les résultats suivants ont été documentés, des preuves ont été fournies, ce qui démontre que le transfert d'informations aux annonces de bénéfices augmente suite à l'adoption obligatoire des IFRS, ce qui suggère en moyenne une comparabilité de l'information comptable (ci-après, la comparabilité). Cependant, lors d'enquêtes plus approfondies, il semble que la comparabilité augmente pour les entreprises domiciliées dans des pays caractérisés par un faible secret (c.-à-d. où la transparence domine) et, plus étonnamment, par un faible niveau de divergence (c'est-à-dire une faible distance comptable) de la norme IFRS avant l'adoption des IFRS. Par conséquent, ces résultats suggèrent que toutes les entreprises n'appliquent pas les IFRS de manière identique et qu'elles ne respectent pas entièrement ou systématiquement les IFRS. La deuxième étude porte sur la transparence des bénéfices en examinant la relation entre les gains et les rendements en matière d'application et de conservatisme. Dans cette étude, nous examinons les effets de l'application et du conservatisme sur la transparence des bénéfices en vertu des IFRS. Les résultats suivants ont été documentés, des éléments de preuve ont été fournis, ce qui démontre que la transparence des bénéfices augmente pour les entreprises domiciliées dans des pays caractérisés par une forte application seulement, alors qu'il n'y a pas d'avantages en matière de transparence des bénéfices suite à l'adoption des IFRS pour les entreprises domiciliées dans des pays caractérisés par un niveau élevé du conservatisme. Cela suggère que les IFRS ne sont pas appliquées de la même manière dans tous les pays. / Despite the importance of the IFRS in the international context of financial reporting accounting, we know very little concerning the effects of culture on the application of the IFRS. This dissertation empirically examines whether accounting information comparability and earnings transparency resulting from the IFRS adoption varies depending on cultural and institutional factors. Thus, the discussion considers, whether cultural and institutional factors can provide an explanation for differences in accounting information comparability and earnings transparency under the IFRS. Accordingly, the primary purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the role of secrecy, conservatism, pre-adoption divergence between IFRS and national GAAP, and enforcement on accounting information comparability and earnings transparency following the mandatory IFRS adoption.This dissertation therefore contributes to the accounting literature by presenting two essays. The essays address the research questions related to the goals of the IFRS in relation to two aspects: accounting information comparability and earnings transparency. The first study investigates comparability with regard to secrecy and pre-adoption divergence between IFRS and national GAAP. In this study, it is argued that it is easy to predict whether the IFRS adoption enhances the market reaction of competitors around the earnings announcements of a given firm. The results were documented evidence demonstrating that information transfer at earnings announcements increases following the mandatory adoption of IFRS, suggesting, on average, a high level of comparability. However, following the investigations, it would appear that comparability increases for firms domiciled in countries with a low level of secrecy (i.e., where transparency dominates) and, where there is a low divergence of accounting distance. Consequently, these results suggest that all firms do not apply the IFRS uniformly and that they do not automatically comply with IFRS. The second study investigates earnings transparency by examining the earnings-returns relationship with regard to enforcement and conservatism. In this study, the effects of enforcement and conservatism on earnings transparency were examined following the mandatory adoption of IFRS. The results were documented, which demonstrate that earnings transparency increases for firms domiciled in countries characterized by low conservatism only (i.e., where optimism dominates) and, there are benefits with regard to earnings transparency following IFRS adoption for firms domiciled in countries characterized by a high level of enforcement. This also suggests that IFRS is not being applied in the same way in all countries. Taken together, there are significant cross-country differences in IFRS compliance. Accordingly, comparability and transparency differ depending on where a firm is domiciled. If the firms are domiciled in a supportive environment in terms of applying the IFRS (i.e., where there is transparency, optimism, low divergence of accounting distance and strong enforcement), the level of comparability and transparency are increased.

The purpose of this study was to explore what exactly bound post-Second World War American conservatives together. Since modern conservatism's recent birth in the United States in the last half century or more, many historians have claimed that both anti-communism and capitalism kept conservatives working in cooperation. My contention was that the intellectual founder of postwar conservatism, Russell Kirk, made imagination, and not anti-communism or capitalism, the thrust behind that movement in his seminal work The Conservative Mind. In The Conservative Mind, published in 1953, Russell Kirk created a conservative genealogy that began with English parliamentarian Edmund Burke. Using Burke and his dislike for the modern revolutionary spirit, Kirk uncovered a supposedly conservative seed that began in late eighteenth-century England, and traced it through various interlocutors into the United States that culminated in the writings of American expatriate poet T.S. Eliot. What Kirk really did was to create a counter-narrative to the American liberal tradition that usually began with the French Revolution and revolutionary figures such as English-American revolutionary Thomas Paine. One of my goals was to demystify the fusionist thesis, which states that conservatism is a monolithic entity of shared qualities. I demonstrated that major differences existed from conservatism's postwar origins in 1953. I do this by using the concept of textual communities. A textual community is a group of people led by a privileged interpreter—someone such as Russell Kirk—who translates a text, for example Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, for followers. What happens in a textual community is that the privileged interpreter explains to followers how to read a text and then forms boundaries around a particular rendering of a book. I argue that conservatism was full of these textual communities and privileged interpreters. Therefore, in consecutive chapters, I look at the careers of Russell Kirk, John Lukacs, Christopher Lasch, and Paul Gottfried to demonstrate how this concept fleshed out from 1953 and well into the first decade of the new millennium. / Ph. D.

The thesis focuses on the conservative canon and analyses the validity of exceptionalist claims of conservative thinking through a deconstructive reading of conservatism. The comparison of classical and radical conservatisms provides the grounds for this analysis. After the introductory chapter, the second chapter of this thesis focuses on the general characteristics of the conservative ideology. It consists of three sub-sections. The first of these presents the characteristics of classical conservatism, while the second turns to consider radical conservatism. Then, in the third sub-section, a discussion of the similarities and differences between these two conservatisms leads to a proposed definition of a core of the conservative canon. Here, it is argued that the epistemological and ontological imperfection of individuals can be regarded as the definitive core, or as the precept which the justification of conservative policies relies upon. The third chapter then focuses on the views of a number of significant figures in the development of political thought on ideology, which is used by these thinkers as a critical tool. A narrative of the historical developments in the analyses of ideology and ideologies is presented in this chapter. In the last part of the chapter, Derridian thinking is introduced. The fourth chapter problematises conservative exceptionalism, or the belief that there is a fundamental difference between conservatism and other ideologies. This chapter is founded upon the analyses of the previous two chapters, using the Derridian reading and referring to the characteristics and commonalities of the conservative canon presented. In this chapter, radicalism is argued to be a persistent theme in conservative thinking, and conservatism is claimed to be founded upon its impossibility.

In this paper the relation between managerial ownership and conservatism is examined. Managerial ownership decreases agency problems caused by the separation of ownership and control. Managerial ownership increases the time horizon of managers and decreases expropriating behaviour. Conservatism is hypothesized to have the same effect on managers due to the asymmetric timeliness of earnings. This suggest that in firms with lower managerial ownership a demand for conservatism arises to substitute for the alignment function of managerial ownership. This paper test this with two approaches. The first replicates the methodology of previous literature. The findings provide no evidence for substitution between managerial ownership and conservatism. Because the estimators of the first methodology are biased a second method is used applying fixed effects. Consistent with the first approach no supporting evidence is found. However, it finds that firms in the sample have conservative accounting. The main implication of this paper is that rewarding managers with shares is not decreasing their conservative behaviour.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the ideological similarities and differences between the two Swedish conservative parties Sweden Democrats and the Moderate Party by study how the two parties basic ideological positions relate to liberal and traditional conservative values. The four dimensions view of human nature (pessimistic - optimistic), theory of society (collectivist - individualistic), view on moral values (collectivist - individualistic) and view on economic ideals (collectivist - individualistic) are used as the analytical instrument to study the two parties ideological positions on each dimension, where the pessimistic/collectivist positions represents traditional conservative values and the optimistic/individualistic positions represents liberal values. My result show that the Moderate Party express a predominantly optimistic view of human nature, a individualistic theory of society, a individualistic view on moral values and a individualistic basic position in their view on economic ideals. The Sweden Democrats express a pessimistic view of human nature, a collectivist theory of society, a collectivist view on moral vaues and a collectivist basic position in their view on economic ideals. My result thus shows that fundamental ideological differences can be discerned between the Sweden Democrats and the Moderate Party.

本研究主要探討財務報表重編前後會計穩健性是否有顯著差異，以瞭解財務報表重編對會計穩健性之影響。本研究以1998年至2007年發生年報重編公司為研究樣本，以T檢定檢測重編前後財務報表穩健性是否具顯著差異，研究結果顯示，重編前財務報表穩健性顯著低於重編後財務報表，證實重編公司重編前財務報表採用較不穩健之會計。此外，本研究進一步探討公司治理與重編前後穩健性之關聯，發現經理人持股比愈高及總經理異動次數愈多，重編前財務報表穩健性顯著低於重編後財務報表。 / This study examines the effect of financial restatements on conservatism. I collect restatement samples from listed companies in Taiwan between 1998 and 2007 and use T-test to validate the hypothesis. The empirical results find that conservatism is significantly lower before the restatement. In addition, this study suggest that the higher managerial ownership and CEO change, the lower conservatism before the restatement.

<p>This paper analyzes a manager's optimal ex-ante reporting system using a Bayesian persuasion approach (Kamenica and Gentzkow (2011)) in a setting where investors affect cash flows through their decision to finance the firm's investment opportunities, possibly assisted by the costly acquisition of additional information (inspection). I examine how the informativeness and the bias of the optimal system are determined by investors' inspection cost, the degree of incentive alignment between the manager and the investor, and the prior belief that the project is profitable. I find that a mis-aligned manager's system is informative</p><p>only when the market prior is pessimistic and is always positively biased; this bias decreases as investors' inspection cost decreases. In contrast, a well-aligned manager's system is fully revealing when investors' inspection cost is high, and is counter-cyclical to the market belief when the inspection cost is low: It is positively (negatively) biased when the market belief is pessimistic (optimistic). Furthermore, I explore the extent to which the results generalize to a case with managerial manipulation and discuss the implications for investment efficiency. Overall, the analysis describes the complex interactions among determinants of firm disclosures and governance, and offers explanations for the mixed empirical results in this area.</p> / Dissertation