This study investigates whether mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in Africa has a significant impact on earnings' quality, despite the prevalence of weak country governance. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has identified the use of a common set of high-quality standards- the International financial reporting standards ( IFRS)- to enhance global accounting information quality, and promotes global adoption. However, research opinion on the impact of IFRS compliance, on earnings quality improvement is mixed and unresolved. Furthermore, little is known about the possible impact on earnings in firms located in Africa, where country governance quality is relatively low. Thus, this study targets African countries, and uses data from a general sample of 680 firms covering the period 2000 to 2012, to enrich the impact-of-global-IFRS-adoption debate, with African evidence. The study hypothesises that earnings quality differs between mandatory IFRS and domestic accounting standards(DAS) reporting periods in Africa. The research design involves a range of earnings quality proxies and the use of robust regression models. The study finds that relative to DAS, IFRS based earnings are: more persistent and closely associated with future period cash flows; less managed towards small profits and less smoothed. Also, the study finds more timely loss recognition and an increasing frequency of large losses recognition during periods of mandatory IFRS reporting. The results are robust to various additional tests and offer convincing evidence consistent with the hypotheses. These findings provide some direct evidence that mandatory adoption of IFRS is likely to improve earnings quality in some countries with weak governance. Thus, the study extends the literature on factors that influence earnings quality, and the impact of IFRS in countries with relatively weak governance. The research also informs firms, investors, country-level policy makers; and provides a lead for future investigation.

Name of Author: Cornelius Babatunde Alalade Title of the Investigation: THE ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE OF INTERNATIONAL OIL COMPANIES IN NIGERIA: The Effect of Fiscal Taxation and the Separation of Ownership and Control. This research investigates the tax policies of the Nigerian government and the separation of ownership and control and the possibility that they impact on the economic performance of the international oil companies operating in Nigeria. The key areas of the research include a literature review which concentrates on both shareholder and stakeholder theories in corporate governance and on the separation of ownership and control. The literature review is also on government control mechanisms, including state ownership of corporations and taxation. Another key part of this research is the investigation of the relationship between types of contract between host government and the operating companies, and the companies' economic performance in relation to contract type. The second part of this research examines the relationship between the variables representing fiscal taxation and those representing economic performance. Given that there are essentially two types of contracts operating in Nigeria's oil and gas exploitation business, that is, Joint Venture (JV) and Production Sharing Contract (PSC), these two formed the basis of the research. For the purposes of measuring economic performance, the unit cost of production and gross margin per barrel were chosen as the variables for measuring the impact of the separation of ownership and control and the impact of fiscal taxation on the economic performanceof the operating companies. Data obtained from secondary sources served as the basis for the quantitative analysis employed in this research,and the results obtained were statistically tested before any interpretation and recommendations were suggested. Interviews were also conducted for the qualitative aspect of this study in order to obtain information on the factors that influenced Nigeria's oil and gas exploration and production fiscal policy formulation in the past. This research provided the opportunity to arrive at certain conclusions which, even if they sometimes appeared obvious, were never previously empirically substantiated, and the corroboration of some existing theories as being applicable to the Nigerian situation. They also provided a basis for suggesting the inappropriateness of some existing concepts or theories in their application to Nigeria's oil and gas exploration and producing companies. For example, the results suggest that the existence of separation of ownership and control does not guarantee optimization of economic performance (or maximization of wealth) for the production sharing contract type in oil companies operating in Nigeria, even if they do elsewhere. Fiscal taxation was also suggested as critical to economic performance but possibly not the only variable impacting on the economics of petroleum exploitation in Nigeria. This research provided other possible areas for further research in both fields of corporate governance and fiscal taxation.

published_or_final_version / Asian Studies / Master / Master of Arts

The liberalisation of the banking sector in the Czech Republic (and the former Czechoslovakia) has proceeded at a rapid pace since the collapse of the socialist regime in 1989. The initial separation of commercial banking activities from the central bank was followed by the partial privatisation of three of the four new institutions created as a result. At the same time new privately owned banks were encouraged to enter the market. Over the last two years, however, a number of bank collapses have adversely affected the sector with twelve of the newly created banks coming under the forced administration of the central bank._The authorities responded, initially, to this by refusing to grant licences for any new banks. This action has recently been relaxed but it has been replaced by a more rigorous regulatory regime which clarifies and strengthens the supervisory activities of the authorities. The explanations proposed for these problems have focused on mismanagement in the banks which has led to a growing proportion of bad loans in banks' portfolios and fraudulent activity which resulted in funds being appropriated by the owners or management of the institutions. The aim of this thesis is to examine, in more detail, these two sets of explanations. A review of banking development is undertaken which highlights both the favourable circumstances under which financial reform has been conducted as well as the inherent problems, such as the high initial level of non - performing loans and the inadequate regulatory framework. It will be concluded that the conditions necessary for fraudulent activity to be viable were apparent and this reason can be used to explain a number of the bank collapses which have occurred. The thesis will also examine the pattern of credit allocation and the implications which arise from the process of credit screening by banks. This part of the analysis will contain both quantitative and qualitative evidence. The latter consists of a series of interviews with bank officials with the aim of identifying, precisely, the nature of the process of credit screening in a sample of banks with differing characteristics. The thesis will conclude that the development of the regulatory environment has not kept pace with the rapid expansion of the banking sector. In addition, serious flaws in the credit screening processes adopted by many banks implies that the problem of non - performing loans in bank portfolios may become more serious.

這篇論文主要在探討以不同融資方式為主的經濟體，是否會對個別公司的股利政策造成影響，我們針對15個國家1244家公司作探討，發現在以銀行債為主要融資方式的國家，個別公司相對發放較低的股利，並且現金股利亦呈現較高的波動度，顯示資訊不對稱的嚴重性，是造成不同資本市場有不同股利政策的原因之一。 / Abstract This paper examines whether differences in the sophistication of capital markets drive dividend policies to vary across countries, by studying on dividend policies of 1244 firms in 15 countries. We find that reliance on banking sector causes lower dividend payout and incentives for dividend smoothing. The same relationship is also found between quality of accounting system and dividend policies. These results confirm that less information asymmetry defuses the need for using dividends as signaling and discipline tools. Furthermore, we find that there exists a positive relation between development of stock market and payout level. This indicates that more important the stock in providing capital to firms, the more likely the firms increase their dividend payout. Finally, some evidences support that a shorter investment horizon leads to a higher payout ratio and a higher extent of dividend smoothing.

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Part I of this dissertation examines the effect of financing costs on the efficiency of the T-bill futures market. The cost-of-carry model is used and three types of financing costs are selected as proxies for RP (repurchase agreement) rates. The results suggest that the cost-of-carry model assuming a constant RP rate is unreliable in explaining the pricing of T-bill futures. A search for "true" financing costs shows that such financing costs could be a nonlinearly weighted rate of the term RP rate (or the 90-day-maturity T-bill rate) and the federal funds rate. Theoretically implied RP rates in the year of 1983 are also generated for comparisons. Part II examines the impact of inflation uncertainty on the futures-forward rate differential. The cost-of-carry model assuming a constant RP rate ignores the future fluctuations of financing costs. A "risk premium" could arise due to inflation uncertainty. This part provides evidence that there exists a systematic relationship between the daily futures-forward rate differences and the inflation rate. Part III provides a theoretical treatment of the optimal arbitrage investment under uncertainty and of equilibrium pricing in the T-bill futures market. A dynamic stochastic programming model shows that a "myopic" property exists in the T-bill futures market in the sense that expectations of the future one-period price movements do not exert an impact on the current optimal arbitrage investment decision under uncertainty. It shows, however, that such a "myopic" property is not pure in that expectations of financing costs in the next period affect the investment decision in the current period. Equilibrium pricing of the T-bill futures is obtained under arbitrage arguments. It shows that an equilibrium price is achieved at the point where the expected current one-period arbitrage profits are zero when cost-of-carry is required, even in a multi-period setting.