This thesis examines the Government Accounting Standards Board by considering its history, current structure, and treatment of a current accounting standards debate. It then uses this examination to make recommendations as to reforms of the GASB and government accounting.

China and its economic development is today something that affects us all in one way or another. Through economic expansion Chinese companies starts to be an important player on the global scene. They are getting an international competitor, co-operating with foreign companies and it has the latest year been heavily invested in by foreign financiers. Conversely, according to recent research a vast majority of the experts claims that the Chinese companies’ financial reporting disclosure holds a low quality. That these financial reports include plentiful falsified information is disturbing the market and prevents shareholders a fair and free view of the companies, it also reduces the control possibilities. Voices have been raised demanding changes to ensure a higher FRQ in the future. But to find the right actions and point out needed changes, the first requirement is finding the roots behind the presumed low FRQ. Experts’ point at different directions, comprising of nine main underlying reasons that are primarily considered affecting the FRQ in negative matters. These nine explanations will be evaluated against each other in this thesis to find out where the main focus needs to be to prevent future falsified financial statements. The nine reasons where it is claimed that China are lacking are: - Legal system -Education -Pressure -Political impact -Ownership structure -Auditing -Low Business ethics -Tax avoidance -Cost reduction This thesis finds that the main underlying reasons behind Chinese firms’ falsified financial stamen are: (1) Pressure – that influences managers and is a great incentive for earnings management. (2) Political impact – the political impact seem to have a substantial negative influence on companies FRQ. (3) Ownership structure – low transparency and hierarchal business structures appears to be biggest problems within the corporate governance. (4) Low business ethics – a too corrupt and non-moral business structure threatens the integrity of the financial reports. (5) Tax avoidance – the unwillingness to pay taxes makes many companies reduce earnings or hide sales to avoid value added tax (VAT). (6) Cost reduction – The high endeavor to keep costs down might in many cases also bring effects on the quality of disclosed material.

Governmental accounting in Taiwan was framed under considerations of budgetary compliance, and law compliance rather than users¡¦ needs. The financial statement about governmental funds is organized based on separation guideline for fixed asset items. That means fixed assets are not listed on balance sheet in final accounting, but with the table of property contents. The Governmental Accounting Standard 10 accounting for long-term equity investments was issued by the Directorate-Generate of Budget, Accounting and Statistics of the Executive Yuan on 29 December , 2008. The accounting is totally different with the previous standards. The study is to work out the issues that may arise in implementing the Governmental Accounting Standard 10 . Since this standard hasn¡¦t been implemented yet, the study is a exploring research. A survey of 2 professors of Accounting and 6 governmental accountants , both are professional in governmental accounting, was made by in-depth interview to understand their opinions about implementing the Standard 10. The conclusions are as follows¡G a. The Directorate-Generate of Budget, Accounting and Statistics of the Executive Yuan could inform that the way to identify the fair value is following GAAP. And amend the accounting system on the basis of the standard 10, then the new GBA . b. Measure the initial cost of the long-term equity investment According to section 17 of the Standard when first implementing the standard. Before that, there must be someone and somehow to confirm each government holds 20% or more of an investee company¡¦s capital or stock with voting rights. c. The unrealized profit and losses from inter-transactions between an investor and investee being not eliminated doesn¡¦t affect the reporting of true government financial condition. d. If a governmental investor has significant influence over an investee and intends to continue its support for the investee, the recognized investment losses should still be limited to the extent that makes the book value of the long-term equity investment equal to zero. And disclosing the exceeding losses by footnote. The accounting report under this procedure is still able to report the true government financial condition. e. The accounting report is enough to provide the useful information of budgetary compliance before implementing the Standard 10. But it provides more useful information of assessing the government financial condition, evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness in performing the policy, and allocating the restricted resources appropriately after implementing the Standard 10. keyword¡Ggovernmental accounting, governmental accounting standards, long-term equity investments, government financial condition

The purpose of the study is to illustrate to the management of entities and professionals who are against the application of IAS/IFRS in Azerbaijan why it is essential to adopt IAS/IFRS. The thesis aims to provide differences of current accounting policies and procedures applied by those entities from IAS/IFRS and justify the application of IAS/IFRS. The thesis provides benefits associated with the adoption of IFRS/IAS, and illustrates the problems that may be faced by the management of entities.

Zugl.: Saarbrücken, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2009 u.d.T.: Kessler, Marco: Bilanzpolitische Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Abbildung von Pensionsverpflichtungen nach HGB und den IFRS - Auswirkungen von contractual trust arrangements (CTA) auf die Vermögens-, Finanz- und Ertragslage sowie die Cashflows deutscher Unternehmen

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Mannheim, 1999.

This thesis focuses on compliance with IFRS disclosure requirements in Malaysia. There are four objectives that this study attempts to achieve, namely: (1) to ascertain whether present regulatory enforcement is effective in curbing non-compliance with IFRS in Malaysia; (2) to determine whether corporate ownership structure, culture and corporate governance attributes have a significant influence on the extent of compliance with IFRS disclosure requirements; (3) to identify the factors of (non-) compliance with IFRS from the perceptions of preparers and auditors; and (4) to explore the reasons why an unqualified audit report was issued despite non-compliance with IFRS disclosure requirements. This study employs a mixed methods approach to achieve the stated objectives, where annual reports of 225 Malaysian listed companies are examined and interviews with regulators, preparers and auditors are conducted. The following findings are documented in this study. Although compliance with accounting standards is mandated by law, this study demonstrates that no Malaysian company has fully complied with IFRS disclosure requirements. Similarly, the companies examined still receive unqualified audit reports despite significant non-compliance with IFRS disclosure requirements. This study argues that merely mandating compliance with accounting standards by law does not result in full compliance with accounting standards if sufficient or stringent enforcement is not in place. The Malaysian economy is dominated by family-owned companies and government-owned companies; however, this study finds that there was not enough evidence to support the influence of these ownership types on the extent of compliance with mandatory disclosure requirements. Despite the importance of corporate governance mechanisms in enhancing financial reporting quality, this study finds that only board meeting, audit committee size and audit committee expertise are significantly associated with the extent of compliance with IFRS disclosure requirements. However, the association direction for audit committee expertise is puzzling, because the negative coefficient suggests that mandatory disclosure decreases with the presence of audit committee experts. This study also provides evidence that culture (ethnicity) has a significant influence on the extent of compliance with IFRS disclosure requirements. This study also contributes to the extant literature by documenting the factors of (non-) compliance with IFRS from the perceptions of preparers and auditors. These factors are the attitude of top management, problems with accounting standards, lack of enforcement, passive investors, materiality, accountants’ attitude, undeveloped capital markets and political excuse. These (non-)compliance factors in fact cannot be revealed by statistical analysis. This study finds that materiality and true and fair view are the two reasons suggested by interviewees that can explain why unqualified audit opinion was expressed despite non-compliance with IFRS. Nevertheless, this study argues that materiality and true and fair view override might also be used (or misused) as an excuse by auditors for not qualifying audit reports in the case of significant non-compliance with IFRS disclosure requirements, given the subjective and vague concept of both materiality and true and fair view.

The issues of zakah and interest for IFIs have been highlighted for several years and attracted many arguments among Islamic scholars and public. The increasing public interest on the Islamic Banking since 1970s has been driven by the increasing sensitivity among Muslims to the relationship between religion and economic activities. With the emergence of IFIs, Muslims community has demanded for an establishment of an accounting body to develop a set of accounting standards that adhere to the Islamic tenets, hence AAOIFI was established. However, the journey of AAOFI in achieving such objective has not been smooth. This paper intended to study the effectiveness of AAOIFI in dealing with the issues of zakah and riba for IFIs by examining the disclosure practice of 25 IFIs worldwide. Based on the analysis conducted, it is concluded that the extents of disclosure by the IFIs are much lower than the AAOIFI requirements. The study also found that leverage and origin factors might contribute to the level disclosures of zakah and financial products. In addition, the test performed also revealed that the adopters of AAOIFI do provide more disclosure as compared to the non-adopters. However, the mean result is relatively low to suggest full compliance with the AAOIFI standards.

The issues of zakah and interest for IFIs have been highlighted for several years and attracted many arguments among Islamic scholars and public. The increasing public interest on the Islamic Banking since 1970s has been driven by the increasing sensitivity among Muslims to the relationship between religion and economic activities. With the emergence of IFIs, Muslims community has demanded for an establishment of an accounting body to develop a set of accounting standards that adhere to the Islamic tenets, hence AAOIFI was established. However, the journey of AAOFI in achieving such objective has not been smooth. This paper intended to study the effectiveness of AAOIFI in dealing with the issues of zakah and riba for IFIs by examining the disclosure practice of 25 IFIs worldwide. Based on the analysis conducted, it is concluded that the extents of disclosure by the IFIs are much lower than the AAOIFI requirements. The study also found that leverage and origin factors might contribute to the level disclosures of zakah and financial products. In addition, the test performed also revealed that the adopters of AAOIFI do provide more disclosure as compared to the non-adopters. However, the mean result is relatively low to suggest full compliance with the AAOIFI standards.

[Truncated abstract] Following the introduction in 1999 of Australian Accounting Standard Board (AASB) 1041: 'Revaluations of Non-Current Assets' (Australian Accounting Standards Board 2001a), this study set out to examine the impact of the introduction of this new standard on: the number (percentage) of Australian firms revaluing various classes and submajor classes of non-current assets; and the value relevance and reliability of the information provided with respect to various sub-major classes of non-current assets. The study also set out to examine the apparent motivations for Australian companies electing the fair value (FV) basis, rather than the historic cost (HC) basis, for reporting property, plant and equipment (PP&E). The sample analysed in this study consisted of Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) listed firms that were included in each of the Connect4, Aspect Financial and Core Research Data (CRD) databases. After excluding firms not covered by all three databases and firms where there were missing data problems, 398 and 424 firms were left in the 1999 and 2002 samples, respectively. Of the 398 and 424 firms, there were 194 firms that were common to both sample periods and a separate analysis of these 'common' firms allowed a 'like-for-like' comparison to be made. The financial year ending June 30, 1999 provides data under the previous standard AASB 1010 (Australian Accounting Standards Board 2000) before the introduction of AASB 1041, while the financial year ending 30 June 2002 provides data under AASB 1041 (the new standard). ... At the disaggregated level (that is, for various sub-major classes of non-current assets), it appears that there was a decline in the number (percentage) of firms choosing to revalue investment property, property, and plant and equipment, while there was no change in the number (percentage) of firms choosing to revalue listed or unlisted investments. It appears that AASB 1041's requirement to revalue frequently when the FV basis was adopted discouraged firms from choosing the FV basis for some asset classes, presumably because the costs associated with frequent revaluations outweighed the perceived benefits. In terms of value relevance, the results suggest that where the variables of interest are scaled there was no improvement in the value relevance of the information provided by Australian companies following the introduction of AASB 1041. However, the results from the unscaled regressions do not support this conclusion and instead suggest that the introduction of AASB 1041 was associated with an overall improvement in the value relevance of the information provided with respect to the various sub-major classes of non-current assets investigated in this study. Resolution of this conflicting result is beyond the scope of this dissertation and is an issue worthy of future research. In terms of reliability, the results suggest that the introduction of AASB 1041 was generally associated with: an improvement in the reliability of information reported with respect to non-current assets reported at FV; and a deterioration in the reliability of information reported with respect to non-current assets reported at HC. Finally, with respect to the potential motivations behind a company's choice of the FV basis for reporting PP&E, the results suggest that firms are motivated to revalue PP&E to: improve their borrowing capacity; for signalling purposes; and to reduce information asymmetry.