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This study investigates the macroeconomic consequences of firm-level accounting conservatism. Consistent with conditional conservatism extending to the aggregate level, I demonstrate that annual estimates of aggregate corporate profits and gross domestic product from 1929 to 2007 compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis are more sensitive to negative aggregate cash flow news than to positive aggregate cash flow news. Next, I estimate the dollar value impact of firm-level accounting conservatism on measurements of macroeconomic fundamentals. Finally, I show that the federal funds rate set by the U.S. Federal Reserve tends to be lower when the dollar value impact of firm-level accounting conservatism on gross domestic product measurements is larger. These results suggest that accounting can impact social welfare by altering the measurement attributes of key macroeconomic indicators and shaping monetary policy decisions which regulate the money supply and alter macroeconomic growth. / text

In 1882, the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation was created which was 500,000 acres, or twenty-two townships. Suddenly, in 1884, the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation was cut down to approximately 476,000 acres, or twenty townships without warning. The total land holdings of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa people in 1884 were ten million acres or approximately 1/10 of North Dakota. But by 1892, their total land holdings were down to thirty four thousand acres, or two townships. In 1882, a traditional tribal government whose hereditary leader had been head chief since 1863 conducts Turtle Mountain Chippewa affairs. However, in 1892, a native committee appointed by a federal Treaty Commission becomes the recognized government body of the Turtle Mountain ChippewaThe Turtle Mountain Chippewa are still today the most prominent of the Plains Chippewa tribes in America, having today's membership and affiliates numbering nearly eighty thousand people. As we shall see, the Turtle Mountain Chippewa were also affiliated with the ethnically European and Indian mixed Métis people, who constitute the largest indigenous group in Canada, and will suffer because of their conflicts between nationality and Canadian and American federal policy. Due to an influx of new evidence, and using quantitative and qualitatitive methodologies combined with analysis of primary and secondary sources, this (dissertation) will contribute to the public record and change previous interpretations concerning the creation of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation in the 1880s, and final settlement treaty between the United States and the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Indians of North Dakota in 1892. Through letters, journals, manuscripts, as well as other miscellaneous works such as newspaper articles and literary books, a thesis framework will be constructed to put some never before revealed information in a proper historical context.Whether or not Little Shell III was the undisputed head chief of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa and that his being deposed by a faction within his own tribal government was wrong or illegal by the tribe or the federal government, is not an objective of this paper. Instead, this historical revision of the pivotal events of the 1880s and 90s will show that Little Shell III's tenure as a head chief among the Turtle Mountain Chippewa will depict a leader who operated within a chieftain's parameters to mediate disputes and competently represented his diverse tribal membership to outsiders. The failure or lack of success in achieving the goals for all of the people at the Turtle Mountains cannot be a condemnation of his abilities considering that success for Little Shell by the 1880s depended upon fair and equitable treatment by the American federal government. Much of the history during the time from 1882 - 1892 has been misinterpreted by historians until now, it is imperative to proceed carefully with the new information and lay a solid groundwork for further study. Nevertheless, this work will charge the U.S. government for fraud against a peaceful defenseless people, and destroying their traditional leadership structure as well.

The Canadian proceeds of crime provisions, Part XTJ.2 of the Criminal Code, are targeted at enterprises that are motivated by the desire to generate profit and accumulate wealth from criminal activity. The main purpose of Part XII.2 is to provide the police and prosecution with powerful new tools to attach the proceeds of crime, and the courts with the power to forfeit such proceeds. This thesis will examine how, in recognition of the procedural and substantive problems with this legislation and in contrast to American legislation, Parliament included numerous provisions to balance such extensive powers. The balancing mechanisms included a provision that allows reasonable legal fees to be paid out of seized or restrained property that is alleged to be proceeds and another that requires an in camera session to be held without the presence of the Attorney General, to determine the reasonableness of such fees. The Parliamentary record explicitly demonstrates that the balancing provisions were meant to ensure that the pre-trial restraint and potential forfeiture of property would withstand Charter challenges, especially with regard to an accused's rights to counsel, fair trial and full answer and defence. In this thesis I will analyze the complexities of proceeds litigation and demonstrate how this necessitates adequate legal representation to ensure that an accused's Charter rights are protected. This thesis explores in depth how Parliament recognized the need for balancing mechanisms that permit funds to be released for an accused to retain private counsel. However, these mechanisms have been significantly narrowed by subsequent judicial interpretation. A result of this line of authority is that defence work in the proceeds area has become very difficult. If reasonable legal fees are not taken from seized proceeds, provincial legal aid plans will have to provide for appropriate counsel. This may not be a realistic option given the funding of these plans and their stated objection to funding proceeds cases. Therefore, in this thesis I will argue that if private counsel must be retained the right to counsel could be effectively forfeited, unless a portion of the seized or restrained assets are released for reasonable legal fees. This thesis will attempt to provide a coherent basis for future interpretation of the Part XII.2 provisions that affect legal fees. The approach taken will incorporate the competing interests of accused persons and the State without undermining the objectives of the legislation. This thesis will focus on Canadian legislation and jurisprudence, but will also have a comparative component that examines how these issues have been dealt with in Australia, England and the United States.

This thesis argues that the First Nations and their material culture have been used as tropes in the construction of national symbols on Canadian money. The twenty dollar bill from the 2004 series of Canadian banknotes, Canadian Journeys, was the impetus for this inquiry. The art of Bill Reid is featured on this banknote. Reid is an artist who identifies, on his mother's side, with the Haida First Nations and his art takes its themes and style from the Haida crest imagery. The implications of utilizing a First Nations artist on a Canadian banknote becomes problematic when considering the antagonistic historical relationship Canada has had with the First Nations and the multiplicity of unresolved land claims. Therefore, I ask, how this Bill Reid banknote should be read. In answering this question I have divided this thesis into three parts. First, I analyze a historical precedent for this contemporary banknote. The 1870 two dollar bill is useful for it both gives an example of the use of First Nations as a trope in representing the nation and it helps expose the importance of money as a national symbol at the time when Canada was struggling to come together as a modern nation. In the next section I analyze the Bill Reid bill as both a part of a symbolic construction of nation and as a material practice which has regional or territorial implications. In the final section I argue that Bill Reid utilized the language commonly used for colonial justification to elevate his own practice. While carving out a market for his work Reid helped to reify nationally accepted histories concerning the First Nations—namely that they are culturally dead.

While previous research has examined the effect of income on happiness, we suggest that how people spend their money may be as important for their well-being as how much they earn. Specifically, we hypothesized that spending money on others may have a more positive impact on well-being than spending money on oneself. We found converging evidence for this hypothesis in a nationally representative survey (Study 1), a longitudinal study of windfall spending (Study 2), and an experimental study in which participants were randomly assigned to spend money on themselves or others (Study 3). We also found that people believe that spending on themselves, as opposed to others, will make them happier (Study 4) and that happier people were more likely to spend on others and experience higher happiness as result (Study 5). These results demonstrate that spending money on others may facilitate the translation of wealth into well-being.

Pinigų plovimas – tai sudėtingas procesas, kurio esminis tikslas – iš pažiūros teisėtos kilmės nusikalstamu būdu įgytam turtui suteikimas arba turto kilmės nuslėpimas. Bet kokios pinigų plovimo operacijos pagrindinis tikslas yra dvilypis: pirmiausia, yra siekiama paslėpti nusikaltimus, iš kurių yra gaunamos pajamos, t.y. predikatinius nusikaltimus, o kai tai pavyksta padaryti, nusikaltėliai siekia užsitikrinti, jog bus galima naudotis tomis pajamomis savo nuožiūra. Lietuvoje baudžiamoji atsakomybė už nusikalstamu būdu įgytų pinigų ar turto legalizavimą arba dar kitaip vadinamą pinigų plovimą yra numatyta BK 216 straipsnyje. Šiame darbe yra nagrinėjami pinigų plovimo sudėties požymiai, analizuojamos problemos, kylančios nustatant ar vertinant vienus ar kitus pinigų plovimo požymius. Siekiant kuo išsamiau atskleisti ir paaiškinti pinigų plovimo požymius, darbe taip pat yra nagrinėjami tarptautiniai ir Europos Sąjungos teisės aktai, kuriuose valstybės įpareigojamos kriminalizuoti pinigų plovimą, numatyti griežtas pinigų plovimo prevencijos priemones, taip pat kiti tarptautiniai instrumentai, skirti kovai su pinigų plovimu. Galiausiai, autorė siekia nustatyti ir įvertinti, ar Lietuvos Respublikos teisės aktuose įtvirtinti pinigų plovimo sudėties požymiai atitinka tarptautinių teisės aktų, ypač Europos Sąjungos, privalomąsias nuostatas. / Money laundering – is a complicate process, the primary aim of which is provision of visually legitimate origin to the property acquired in criminal manner or suppression of property origin. Primary aim of any money laundering operation is dual: first, it is strived to conceal the crimes, from which the income comes, i.e. predicate crimes, and when it is succeeded to do that, criminals strive to ensure that it would be possible to use this income at their own discretion. Criminal responsibility for legalization of money or property acquired in criminal manner, or otherwise called money laundering, in Lithuania is stipulated by an article BK 216. This research paper analyzes the features of money laundering contents; the problems that arise upon establishment or evaluation of one or the other money laundering features are analyzed. In order to unfold and explain thoroughly the features of money laundering the research paper also examines international and European legal acts, by which the states undertake to criminalize money laundering, stipulate strict prevention measures of money laundering, also other international instruments intended to fight money laundering. Eventually, the author seeks to establish and evaluate whether the features of money laundering contents consolidated in legal acts of the Republic of Lithuania correspond to the compulsory provisions of international legal acts, especially of the European Union.

In this thesis, I sought to establish whether the mere presence of money differentially affects the perception of competent and autonomous control over life outcomes among people of relatively low and high self-perceived wealth. According to my theoretical perspective regarding the effects of monetary cues, thinking about money should cause people to view themselves in terms of their own relative financial resources. As money is perceived as a resource that enables competent and autonomous control over life outcomes, the presence of money should cause people low in wealth to feel lower in personal control and autonomy and should motivate the preservation or retrieval of a sense of control and autonomy. By contrast, the presence of money should cause the wealthy to feel higher in personal control and autonomy. Three experiments were designed to test hypotheses stemming from this view and to broaden our understanding of how and why money affects cognition and behaviour. In Experiment 1, I tested whether a money prime affected perceived control, autonomy, and need for structure. For people low in self-perceived wealth, money decreased autonomy and control over life outcomes, and increased the need for structure. People high in wealth were not affected by the money prime. In Experiment 2, I examined whether the presence of money had consequences for interactions with others in social environments characterized by low and high structure. In a setting lacking structure, the presence of money caused people of lower socioeconomic status (SES) to prefer less social contact compared to people of higher SES. The interacting effects of money and SES diminished when the environment was structured in nature. In Experiment 3, I tested competing hypotheses regarding whether the presence of money can influence attitudes and beliefs about external sources of control. I found that when people who were lower in wealth were primed with money, versus not, they reported lesser belief in a controlling god. By contrast, when people of higher wealth were primed with money, versus not, they reported greater belief in a controlling god. I discuss my findings vis-à-vis the current perspective and previous money priming research. / Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC); Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS)

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This thesis studies the role of multi-stage production for the monetary transmission mechanism. I employ a monetary search model to show how multi-stage production influences both the long run and the short run effects of money growth. Multi-stage production provides an additional channel for money growth having effects through intermediate goods between different production stages. Extending Shi's (1998) model from a single-stage to a multi-stage production model, I show that money growth rate has an unconventional long run effect on quantities per match, and the long run response of input inventory investment is different from that of output inventory investment. Contrary to classic search models, the steady state effect of money growth on the quantity of finished goods per match is not monotonic and depends on the money growth rate. Furthermore, in steady state the quantities per match first increase with the growth rate of money, before falling for large growth rates. Input inventories arise due to search frictions. Money growth also has hump-shaped real effects on steady state input inventory investment. The intermediate goods build a bridge between the labor market and the finished goods market. Intuitively, households hire more labor with higher future revenue and produce more intermediate goods in order to match the employment level. With more labor and more intermediate goods, finished goods producers can produce more when matched. As a consequence, they are stuck with more input inventories. Moreover, my model suggests that changes in the money growth rate would be one of the reasons for the decline of the inventory-to-sales ratio since the mid-1980s. Finally, I calibrate my model to quarterly US data. Contrary to other work, my model is able to replicate the stylized facts on inventory movements over the business cycle by solely relying on monetary shocks. The theoretical impulse response functions can quantitatively reproduce the corresponding empirical ones estimated in a structure autoregressive model. Moreover, the quantitative analysis supports the argument that input inventories amplify aggregate fluctuations over business cycles. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2012-09-16 20:44:21.876