Práca je sondou do amerického zákona z roku 2002, implementovaného v roku 2004 do akciových spoločností - tzv. Sarbanes-Oxley Act. V krátkosti vysvetľuje históriu bankrotov veľkých firiem po roku 2001, zaoberá sa vplyvom na účtovnícke, audítorské a finančné profesie, geografickým dosahom tejto americkej úpravy, ktorá sa týka prakticky celého sveta. Prevádza obsahom zákona, skúma náklady a prínosy. Najmä sa práca dotýka sekcie 404 o interných kontrolách nad finančným reportovaním a ich testovania, overenia ich správnosti a funkčnosti.

A predicted loss of agricultural rice-wetlands and increasing urbanization and development threatens the remaining freshwater wetlands along the upper Texas coast. To avoid, minimize, and mitigate wetland loss, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) is directed to enforce Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (1975 amendment) by administering permits for development. Furthermore, a 1990 Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the Corps and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a national goal of no net wetland loss (NNL). My goals were to identify the frequency of occurrence of freshwater wetland loss due to dredge or fill, assess final plans to mitigate wetland loss, and verify the persistence of the created compensatory wetlands. I created a database of 96 individual, Section 404 permits issued from 1981 to 2001 in the counties of Chambers, Hardin, Jefferson, Liberty, Montgomery, Orange, and San Jacinto (Galveston District Office, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers). Descriptive statistics were calculated for permit characteristics in relation to issue date (pre- or post-NNL). Public comments received from national and state agencies were rank ordered against mitigation plan type to determine Spearman's Rank Order Correlation Coefficient. Visual identification (via site visits and 1996 aerial photos) was used to validate compensatory wetland persistence. Shoreline protection of private property and oil and gas drilling (64% of permit applicants and 59% of impacts) had the greatest effect on wetland loss in the region, particularly Chambers, Jefferson, and Montgomery counties. Overall, 79.3 ha of freshwater wetlands were gained; however, gain was overestimated due to large projects for habitat enhancement. Permits issued post-NNL were more likely to have formal mitigation plans (58% vs. 13% pre-NNL) and allowed no net wetland loss. Although agency comments recommending more formal mitigation plans increased after NNL, only a weak positive correlation was detected (Spearman's r less than or equal to 0.4). Six of seven created wetlands remained in existence through 2006 though they are freshwater ponds replacing more diverse aquatic systems. I recommend the development of a comprehensive method to track wetland loss, mitigation, and changes in watersheds over time.

A predicted loss of agricultural rice-wetlands and increasing urbanization and development threatens the remaining freshwater wetlands along the upper Texas coast. To avoid, minimize, and mitigate wetland loss, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) is directed to enforce Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (1975 amendment) by administering permits for development. Furthermore, a 1990 Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between the Corps and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a national goal of no net wetland loss (NNL). My goals were to identify the frequency of occurrence of freshwater wetland loss due to dredge or fill, assess final plans to mitigate wetland loss, and verify the persistence of the created compensatory wetlands. I created a database of 96 individual, Section 404 permits issued from 1981 to 2001 in the counties of Chambers, Hardin, Jefferson, Liberty, Montgomery, Orange, and San Jacinto (Galveston District Office, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers). Descriptive statistics were calculated for permit characteristics in relation to issue date (pre- or post-NNL). Public comments received from national and state agencies were rank ordered against mitigation plan type to determine Spearman's Rank Order Correlation Coefficient. Visual identification (via site visits and 1996 aerial photos) was used to validate compensatory wetland persistence. Shoreline protection of private property and oil and gas drilling (64% of permit applicants and 59% of impacts) had the greatest effect on wetland loss in the region, particularly Chambers, Jefferson, and Montgomery counties. Overall, 79.3 ha of freshwater wetlands were gained; however, gain was overestimated due to large projects for habitat enhancement. Permits issued post-NNL were more likely to have formal mitigation plans (58% vs. 13% pre-NNL) and allowed no net wetland loss. Although agency comments recommending more formal mitigation plans increased after NNL, only a weak positive correlation was detected (Spearman's r less than or equal to 0.4). Six of seven created wetlands remained in existence through 2006 though they are freshwater ponds replacing more diverse aquatic systems. I recommend the development of a comprehensive method to track wetland loss, mitigation, and changes in watersheds over time.

No description available.

This study investigates whether disclosures of material weaknesses in a firm’s internal control over financial reporting are associated with lower investor perceived earnings quality. I measure investor perceived earnings quality by a market returns based representation of earnings quality called e-loading developed by Ecker et al. (2006). My empirical tests use sample firms that disclosed at least one material weakness from August 2002 to October 2005. The cross-sectional univariate analysis shows that firms disclosing internal control material weaknesses have lower investor perceived earnings quality than matched firms that disclose no internal control problems. However, further cross-sectional multivariate regression analysis reveals that after controlling for firm characteristics, only disclosures of company-level material weaknesses have an incremental impact on investor perceived earnings quality, while disclosures of the less pervasive account-specific material weaknesses do not have a measurable effect on perceived earnings quality. From intertemporal within-firm analysis, I find no evidence that firms experienced a change in their perceived earnings quality after their first disclosure of internal control material weaknesses as per SOX 302 or 404. In contrast, I find that firms experienced an increase in perceived earnings quality after they received their first unqualified SOX 404 audit report indicating remediation of previously disclosed material weaknesses. This suggests that, although investors did not find the initial SOX disclosures of internal control weaknesses to be incrementally informative, the legislation motivated firms to remediate weak controls; moreover, the SOX-induced improvement in weak internal controls enhanced investors’ perception of the offending firms’ financial reporting quality. / Thesis (Ph.D, Management) -- Queen's University, 2009-12-17 11:41:11.323

Texte remanié de: Diss.--Philosophische Fakultät--Universität Köln, 1984.

I examine three issues related to internal control reporting by non-accelerated filers. Motivation for the three studies comes from the fact that Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) continues to be controversial, as evidenced by the permanent exemption from Section 404(b) of SOX granted to non-accelerated filers by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. The Dodd-Frank Act also requires the SEC to study compliance costs associated with smaller accelerated filers. In the first part of my dissertation, I document that the audit fee premium for non-accelerated filers disclosing a material weakness in internal controls (a) is significantly lower than the corresponding premium for accelerated filers, and (b) declines significantly over time. I also find that in the case of accelerated filers remediating clients pay lower fees compared to clients continuing to report internal control problems; however, such differences are not observed in the case of non-accelerated filers. The second essay focuses on audit report lag. The results indicate that presence of material weaknesses are associated with increased audit report lags, for both accelerated and non-accelerated filers. The results also indicate that the decline in report lag following remediation of problems is greater for accelerated filers than for non-accelerated filers. The third essay examines early warnings (pursuant to Section 302 disclosures) for firms that subsequently disclosed internal control problems in their 404 reports. The analyses indicate that non-accelerated firms with shorter CFO tenure, presence of accounting experts on the audit committee, and more frequent audit committee meetings are more likely to provide prior Section 302 warnings. Overall the results suggest that there are differences in internal control reporting between the accelerated and non-accelerated filers. The results provide empirical grounding for the ongoing debate about internal control reporting by non-accelerated filers.

This study investigates whether the current lack of structure of internal control weakness disclosures (a narrative about the reliability of the financial reporting system) leads nonprofessional investors to make differential investment decisions. Using the non-accelerated filer (smaller public company) setting, where nonprofessional investors are likely to consume unaudited internal control reports in their investing judgments and decisions, I examine two facets of internal control disclosure formats: presentation salience and disaggregation of material weaknesses. A 2 x 2 between-participants behavioral experiment was conducted with internal control presentation salience (bulleted vs. in-text) and disaggregation level (a single material weakness vs. a combination of multiple control deficiencies that is a material weakness). I find that nonprofessional investors reward companies that disclose internal control weaknesses more saliently. The results also indicate that disaggregation interacts with salience in that it increases the effect of salience on investing judgments such that salient (stealth) disclosure of a combination of control deficiencies is viewed more positively (negatively) than salient (stealth) disclosure of a material weakness. These findings are contrary to Rennekamp (2012) who finds that processing fluency in bad news leads to more negative investment judgements. Additional analyses indicated that the results related to management trust and credibility are consistent with prior literature. The findings contribute to academia and practice by shedding light on the importance that needs to be placed on the presentation format of internal control disclosures.

Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Historia / Seminario de Grado : Sociedad y política en el mundo greco-romano

A large body of research has shown that a late bilingual’s L1 and L2 phonetic categories influence each other, yielding deviations from monolingual norms in the phonetics of both languages. Existing models of L2 sound acquisition (e.g., the Speech Learning Model; Flege, 1995, 2007) predict unified phonetic spaces which accommodate both L1 and L2 sound categories. Such connections between an L1 and an L2 are believed to lead to persistent non-nativelikeness in the L2, but also to divergence from the monolingual norm in the L1, as shown in numerous studies (e.g., Bergmann et al., 2016). In this dissertation, I focus on the differences in the sound patterns of a bilingual’s languages which do not only emerge in the precise phonetic realizations of L1 sounds but also in language-specific distributional patterns that determine the realization of these sound categories in different phonetic contexts. Previous work in L1 attrition is limited to a small set of phonetic properties (especially VOT, e.g., Flege, 1987), variables beyond L2 transfer which are known to give rise to variable realizations have been neglected. Thus, little is known as to whether bilinguals’ realizations of an L1 sound category in different phonetic contexts (e.g., position within a syllable) are subject to change in L1 attrition, and whether such changes arise due to long-term exposure to different distributional patterns of an equivalent L2 category. In this dissertation I address these gaps by exploring L1 attrition in the distributional and phonetic characteristics of liquids to shed light on the contribution of the L2 and the role of general phonetic and phonological variables to the processes that drive change in an L1. I investigate changes to phonetic properties and distributional patterns of rhoticity and /l/-allophony in the L1 of American-German late bilinguals, a language constellation which offers an instructive test case to investigate the causes of L1 attrition as well as the source from which changes due to L1 attrition emerge. Furthermore, changes to liquids can also shed light on the processes which drive sound change, gradience and variability due to various positional and phonetic factors (e.g., preceding vowel, syllable structure) in liquids across many native varieties of English. In particular, I explore the variable realization and distributional patterns of two sounds known to be subject to a considerable degree of gradience and variability, namely English /r/ and /l/, in American English-German late bilinguals. To that end, I present the results of a production study of 12 L2-dominant American English-German late bilinguals as well as a monolingual control group for each language. The speakers performed a variety of production tasks which were aimed to elicit the realization of (non)-rhoticity and /l/-(non-)allophony in both languages of the late bilinguals, English and German which were analyzed auditorily (/r/ only) and acoustically (/r/ and /l/). Although L1 attrition of rhotics and laterals has been investigated previously (e.g., de Leeuw, 2008; Ulbrich & Ordin, 2014), the effect of contextual variables on L1 attrition and whether such variables also shape L1 attrition remains unexplored. The results of the auditory analyses of postvocalic /r/ revealed that the late bilinguals showed non-convergence with monolingual (non-)rhoticity in both of their languages by vocalizing postvocalic /r/ more frequently in their L1 (English) and failing to entirely suppress rhoticity in their L2 (German) leading up to a higher degree of rhoticity in their L2. While the loss of rhoticity in the bilingual’s English was distributed along a spectrum of contextual constraints (e.g., type of pre-rhotic vowel and morpho-phonological environment) known to affect rhoticity in other English varieties, the non-targetlike productions of non-rhoticity (i.e., non-vocalized postvocalic /r/) in their L2, German, were not sensitive to the same contextual constraints. The acoustic analyses of the bilinguals’ rhotic productions in English and German differed from the monolinguals in the acoustic correlates of rhoticity in pre-rhotic vowels where they showed reduced anticipatory F3-lowering (i.e., less /r/-colored vowels). I take my results to indicate that the bilinguals operate in two separate phonological grammars which approximate the respective L1 norm but show an increase of variability along constraints already present in each grammar. In contrast, the bilinguals’ phonetic system seem shared between the two grammars. This leads to persistent L1-L2-interactions as the two grammars operate within the same phonetic space. Thus, the changes in L1 attrition are induced but not governed by the L2: Change to the L1 reflects constraints underlying the L1 as well as more general laws of phonetics and universal trajectories of language change. The lateral results revealed that just like in postvocalic /r/, the bilinguals showed non-convergence with the monolingual norm regarding the velarization of coda /l/ in both their languages. The changes to English laterals were sensitive to their positional context and more substantial for word-initial laterals than word-final laterals. Similarly, their German laterals were non-convergent with the monolinguals in two ways. Firstly, the bilinguals differed with regard to the acoustic specifications of their laterals, and secondly, the bilinguals failed to suppress the lateral allophony from their L1, leading to a non-targetlike allophonic pattern in their L2 laterals. I interpret the lateral results to lack evidence that the L1 allophonic rule was affected by the presence of an L2; nevertheless, L1 change emerged in the phonetic specifications of laterals. Furthermore, the bilinguals did not establish a nativelike allophonic pattern in their L2, leading to non-convergence in the allophonic distribution as well as the phonetic realization of German laterals. In this way, this dissertation provides evidence for L1 attrition in the distributional and the phonetic properties of liquids in the L1 of late bilinguals. In particular, the study presented in this dissertation provides evidence that L1 attrition is induced by the presence of a similar sound pattern in the L2. The pathway of attrition follows constraints not only underlyingly present in the L1 but also part of the universal laws of phonetics known to shape sound change. To explain these results, I draw from existing constraint grammars in phonological theory (such as Optimality Theory and Harmonic Grammar) to develop my Dynamic Constraints approach which allows the effects of external variables (e.g., L2 acquisition and its effect on the mind), and internal variables such as an increased likelihood of variability due to articulatory differences can be modeled using scaling factors which can interact with each other, the noise within the grammars, and the constraint weight itself. In this way, the model links previous findings on L1 attrition and its connections to diachronic and synchronic variability, offering insights into the links between the individual languages in a bilingual’s mind. / Bis heute hat eine Vielzahl von Studien zum Spracherwerb im Erwachsenenalter gezeigt, dass sich die phonetischen Merkmale der Muttersprache (L1) und Zweitsprache (L2) gegenseitig beeinflussen. Durch den Einfluss der L1 auf die Lautbildung in der L2 weichen insbesondere späte L2-Lerner von der L1 Norm ab. Modelle zum Erwerb von Lautmerkmalen in einer Zweitsprache wie zum Beispiel das Speech Learning Model (SLM) von Flege (2007) erklären den starken Einfluss der L1 im Spracherwerb im Erwachsenenalter anhand einer Eingliederung des Lautsystems der L2 in den bereits bestehenden phonetischen Raum der L1. Die dadurch entstandene Verknüpfung zwischen der L1 und der L2 führten nicht nur zum Einfluss der L1 auf die L2, sondern wie durch das SLM vorgesagt und durch neuere Studien gezeigt (z.B. DeLeeuw, Mennen & Scobbie, 2004; Chang, 2012), auch zu Veränderungen der L1 Lautkategorien. Diese nähern sich hierbei an die Ziellaute der L2 an, ein Prozess der als Spracherosion bezeichnet wird. Über das genaue Fortschreiten und die Gesetzmäßigkeiten des Einflusses der L2 auf die L1 ist jedoch wenig bekannt. In der bisherigen Forschung wurden Veränderungen in der L1 durch Transfer von der L2 in die L1 erklärt; jedoch zeigt sich bei genauerer Betrachtung vorheriger Ergebnisse, dass die L2 allein nicht ausreicht, um die beobachteten Veränderungen vollständig zu erklären. In meiner Dissertation befasse ich mich mit Prozessen der Spracherosion, welche sich nicht nur in den konkreten phonetischen Realisierungen von Lauten der L1 später bilingualer Sprecher äußern, sondern auch in den Verteilungsmustern von konkreten positionsspezifischen Lautvarianten. Die Forschung zur Spracherosion in der L1 beschränkte sich bislang auf eine kleine Anzahl von phonetischen Merkmalen, insbesondere VOT (z.B. Flege, 1987), und erklärte Veränderungen vollständig über die Merkmaleigenschaften der L2. Im Gegensatz hierzu ist der Beitrag anderer Faktoren jenseits des L2-Transfers zur Spracherosion weitestgehend unerforscht. Daher ist aktuell wenig bekannt, ob zweisprachige Realisierungen einer L1-Lautkategorie in verschiedenen phonetischen Kontexten (z. B. Position innerhalb einer Silbe) ebenfalls von Erosionserscheinungen betroffen sein können. Ebenfalls ist der Grund für solche Veränderungen unbekannt. In meiner Dissertation schließe ich diese Lücke, indem ich untersuche, wie Veränderungsprozesse der Spracherosion in den Verteilungs- und phonetischen Merkmalen wirken. Zu diesem Zweck untersuche ich Veränderungen phonetischer Merkmale sowie der Verteilungsmuster von L1-Rhotizität und /l/-Allophonen bei späten Amerikanisch-Deutschen Bilingualen. Zu diesem Zweck präsentiere ich mein Ergebnis einer Produktionsstudie von zwölf L2-dominanten Amerikanisch-Deutsch-Spätsprachlern sowie einer einsprachigen Kontrollgruppe zur jeweiligen Sprache. Die Proband*innen führten eine Vielzahl von Produktionsaufgaben, die darauf abzielten, die (Nicht-) Rhotizität und /l/-Allophonie in beiden Sprachen (Englisch und Deutsch) zu evaluieren. Diese habe ich in dieser Arbeit auditiv analysiert (nur /r/) und akustisch (/r/ und /l/) ausgewertet. Obwohl der Verlust von Rhotischen und Lateralen in der L1 bereits untersucht wurde (z. B. de Leeuw, 2008; Ulbrich & Ordin, 2014), blieb der Effekt von linguistischen und nicht-linguistischen Variablen auf den Erstsprachverlust bisher unerforscht. Das Ergebnis der auditorischen Analyse von postvokalischen /r/ zeigt, dass die späten Bilingualen von monolingualen Sprechern beider Sprachen abweichen. Im Englischen realisierten die Bilingualen das postvokalische /r/ häufiger in der L2-ähnlichen (vokalisierten) Variante und zeigten Reste von konsonantischen Realisierungen in der eigentlich nicht-rhotischen L2. Während der Verlust der Rhotizität in der L1 der Bilingualen (Englisch) von kontextuellen Beschränkungen (z. B. Art des vorrhotischen Vokals und der morphophonologischen Struktur der Silbe) geprägt war und differentielle Verteilungen über die Kontexte hinweg zeigte, waren die Bilingualen in ihrer L2 (Deutsch) nicht empfänglich für kontextuelle Variation, wie es auch in monolingualen Sprechern des Deutschen erwartet wird. Die akustischen Analysen zeigen, dass rhotische Produktionen der zweisprachigen Sprecher im Englischen und Deutschen sich deutlich von denen der monolingualen Kontrollgruppen unterscheiden: Hier wichen die späten Bilingualen vor allem in der Produktion antizipatorischer Rhotizität ab und produzierten die vorrhotischen Vokale mit weniger rhotischer Färbung. Ich interpretiere meine Ergebnisse als Beleg, dass die bilingualen Sprecher in zwei getrennten phonologischen Grammatiken für ihre Sprache arbeiten, die jeweils der L1-Norm entsprechen, jedoch einen höheren Grad an Variabilität zeigen. Diese Variabilität entsteht jedoch nicht durch sprachübergreifenden Transfer, sondern ist beeinflusst von den grammatischen Gegebenheiten der L1. Die phonetische Analyse zeigte im Gegensatz dazu, dass die bilingualen in einem einzigen phonetischen Raum agieren, welchen sich beide Sprachen teilen und wodurch phonetische Wechselwirkungen zwischen beiden Sprachen entstehen. Somit werden die Veränderungen im Zuge der Spracherosion von der L2 induziert, aber nicht von ihr gesteuert. Die Änderungen der L1 zeigt Sprachveränderungen auf, denen die Grammatik der L1 zugrunde liegt, und sind weiterhin geprägt von allgemeinen Gesetzen der Phonetik und des Sprachwandels. Die Ergebnisse der Lateral-Analyse zeigen, dass genau wie in postvokalischen /r/ die zweisprachigen Sprecher nicht mit monolingualen Sprechern konvergent sind. Besonders in Bezug auf die Velarisierung von wortfinalen /l/ in beiden Sprachen unterscheidet sich die bilinguale Gruppe deutlich von Monolingualen. Die festgestellten Änderungen unterlagen hier positionsbedingten Beschränkungen und waren im wortinitialen /l/ deutlich stärker ausgeprägt als im wortfinalen /l/. Weiterhin zeigten die Bilingualen eine stark ausgeprägte Allophonie in beiden Sprachen. Die Ergebnisse der Untersuchungen zu Lateralen liefern jedoch keinen Beleg für einen gleichmäßigen Erosionsprozess, und waren stattdessen stark geprägt von der L1 sowie von universellen Gesetzmäßigkeiten der Lautbildung. Insofern zeigt meine Dissertation, dass Spracherosion nicht einheitlich auf einen Sprecher wirkt, sondern dass Spracherosion einem historischen Prozess des Lautwandels ähnelt, welcher universellen phonetischen und phonologischen Gesetzen folgt. Die Ergebnisse meiner Studie erkläre ich mithilfe von phonologischen Constraint-Grammatiken (insbesondere Optimality Theory und Harmonic Grammar), den ich Dynamic Constraints nenne. In diesem Ansatz modifiziere ich einen Algorhithmus, wodurch linguistische und nicht-linguistische Faktoren das Gewicht von Constraints und die zufällige Streuung von Gewichten beeinflussen können. Hierdurch ergibt sich die Möglichkeit, mit Dynamic Constraints bisherige Forschungsergebnisse im Bereich der Psycholinguistik mit Kenntnissen aus der historischen und sozialen Sprachforschung zu verbinden und einen Einblick in die Sprachsysteme von Bilingualen zu gewinnen.