Abstract Financial transparency has been playing the role of one of the most significant approaches to financial reform since the eighties. This is true of not only advanced countries but also developing countries where democratic awareness is blooming among the public, especially countries in poverty, because people there tend to demand more and more aggressively that the government publish important financial information such as the revenue and annual expenses as they get to realize how much the governmental budget impacts on the economical development and the distribution of resources of the country, and Taiwan is among the rest. As democratic trends cracked Taiwanese autocracy in the late eighties, the government began to take a relatively open stance towards publicizing the budgeting processes and the information concerned. Unfortunately, such changes seem to be limited to the central government only. As for the local governments, however, budgeting still tends to be done in black boxes as always. Indeed, little has been done to enhance the financial transparency of the local governments. People still focus on the facts of local financial difficulties and deficits as well as their demands on the systemization and transparency of central grants-in-aid to the local governments, neglecting the persistent lack of proper financial information publication. What exactly is the cause of local governmental financial unbalance? Does it come from improper expenditure increase or shortage of income or both? Neither the central government nor the local ones have provided solid and complete background information for the public to make their own judgments from. In fact, the central government should actively help the local governments construct handy, thorough financial information databases and thereby optimize the transparency of critical data, minimizing people¡¦s cost for accessing information and maximizing their interest in participating in local public financial affairs. On December 6, 2005, Taiwanese Legislative Yuan passed the Law of Governmental Information Publication to ensure people¡¦s right to knowledge, promoting their understanding of, trust in, and supervision upon public affairs, taking a big step towards administrative and financial transparency. The purposes of this research are: 1. By looking back on the literature concerned, the author wishes to make a comparison between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in terms of how they define the financial transparency of a member country and thereby to get the industrial circle, the government, the academia, and the general public to better understand and to value the concept of financial transparency. 2. Through depth interviews, the author wishes to institutionally, legally, and administratively explore possible strategies and steps that local governments can take to enhance the financial transparency, so that the general public can be better encouraged to participate in and to supervise local financial administration, raising the efficiency in making good use of resources of all kinds, strengthening local finances. The author suggests that the following steps be taken to enhance local governmental financial transparency: 1. Put together general, concise financial information reports. 2. Open new channels for the publicizing of financial information. 3. Formulate laws and codes concerning governmental financial information release. 4. The central government should build up a platform on which all financial information countrywide can be shown and processed. 5. Set up a national treasury payment information system. Keywords: Financial transparency, Local government, Tax expenditure

Master of Science / School of Family Studies and Human Services / Melinda S. Markham / Interpersonal aspects of a relationship (i.e., equality, trust, disclosure, etc.) as they relate to finances have important implications for marital satisfaction; however, emphasis on financial transparency, “the open and honest disclosure of one’s finances,” has yet to be researched. To increase our capacity to study the role of finances in the marital relationship, the purpose of this study was to develop the Financial Transparency Scale (FTS) to assess financial transparency between married partners. A sample of 183 married individuals in their first 5 years of their first marriage completed an online survey, consisting of the FTS and four related scales. Principal components analysis (PCA) was conducted to determine the FTS is comprised of three components: financial partnership, financial secrecy, and financial trust and disclosure of the individual partner. The first component, financial partnership (eigenvalue = 10.909), consisted of 18 items and accounted for 41.96% of the variance and had a high internal reliability of (α = .95). Component 2, financial secrecy (eigenvalue = 2.845), consisted of three items and accounted for 10.94% of variance with an internal reliability of (α = .93). Component 3, financial trust and disclosure of the individual partner (eigenvalue = 1.76), consisted of five items and accounted for 6.77% of total variance with an internal reliability (α = .83). The FTS was positively correlated with four related scales: the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale, the Shared Goals and Values Scale, the Frequency of Financial Management Scale, and the Communication Patterns Questionnaire – Short Form, each of which are key behaviors of financial and marital satisfaction. The FTS will benefit financial practitioners as they can use the scale to determine the level of financial transparency between married individuals, drawing attention to areas of concern such as financial secrecy between partners. For researchers, this scale provides a measurement for a sophisticated perspective on the interpersonal factors that mediate financial transparency between married individuals.

Creditworthiness is a quality that is important to all stakeholders of an organisation, especially bondholders. It is posited that good corporate governance practices assist the confidence that stakeholders have in an organization’s ability to generate the strong cash flows that are needed to meet financial obligations, which in turn should enhance credit risk assessments. Much research has been conducted into rating assessments, but these have largely been directed at developed markets and they have not generally been focused on the impact of good corporate governance practices and procedures. The primary focus of this research is to address this issue through an investigation into the impact of key factors upon the credit risk assessments of listed companies on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) in Jordan, as assessed by World'vest Base Inc. (WVB) credit risk assessment scores for Jordanian companies between 2005 and 2007 inclusively. Drawing upon insights from agency (including management disciplining and wealth redistribution hypotheses), stewardship, stakeholder, signalling, legitimacy and the diffusion of innovation theories, this thesis investigates the determinants of WVB credit risk assessments of Jordanian firms under five headings: accounting and financial aspects, market and regulatory perspectives, influence of ownership structure, financial transparency/disclosure and corporate governance factors. To achieve this, an array of modelling techniques is used in order to provide a more comprehensive picture. They include bivariate analysis, one-way analysis of variance, ordinary least square regressions for numerical scores, binary logistic regressions, and ordinal logistic regression. The results demonstrate that accounting and financial factors have a significant impact on credit risk assessments but not capital intensity. Profitability is positively associated with credit risk assessments, while leverage and loss propensity have a negative association. With respect to market and regulatory factors, size and Tobin’s Q are positively associated with credit risk assessments. By contrast type of sector and audit are not related to credit risk assessments. Foreign ownership enhances ratings, whilst institutional ownership has a negative impact. Also, insider ownership and family ownership have some importance. It was surprising to find that whilst financial transparency and disclosure variables are significantly associated positively with credit risk assessments in some models, they were generally not significant across other models. Nevertheless, the study finds empirical evidence to support a degree of association between credit risk assessments and corporate governance factors. There is also a positive association between board size and credit risk assessments, but the most important aspect of corporate governance for Jordanian firms is board expertise. The originality of this thesis also embraces the inclusion not only of externally published WVB risk assessments in the Jordanian context, but also internal numerical ratings that were made available with kind permission from the WVB agency for the purposes of this research. The question is whether there are insights that can be gained from such internal ratings that have not hitherto been made available to other researchers. The answer is in the affirmative, for role duality on the board of directors is evidently more important to WVB’s own internal numerical rating assessments than is evidenced by the WVB externally published credit risk assessments. Specifically, the significance of corporate governance (role duality) is missed by multivariate models that are based solely on externally published data. Furthermore, financial transparency and disclosure variables reveal more (albeit moderate) support for the more refined internal scores of WVB than for the external assessment ratings. Finally, family ownership is also important to WVB’s internal scores. Thus, this research has enabled deeper insights to be gained into credit risk assessment determinants within the Jordanian context.

近年來，私立學校（以下簡稱私校）不斷爆發財務問題，不僅影響教育目標之達成，亦引起社會大眾對私校的不信任。教育部認為，治本之道，在強化私校的內部控制，於是，修正私立學校法，並強制私校設置監察人（見民國九十年九月公布的修正草案），惟其後教育部的立場已由強制設置改為鼓勵設置。草案公布後，私校董事的反對聲浪不斷，但其他人則可能有不同的看法。本研究探討對監察人制度是否可降低私校發生財務問題的看法，以及不同人對上述問題的看法是否不同。 　　財務透明，是組織避免發生財務問題的一個方法，因此，本研究藉監察人制度是否影響私校財務透明的程度，而回答上述第一個問題。不同特色的監察人制度，功能亦不同，本研究從三個層面探討監察人制度的特色，包括：監察人的獨立性、其專業能力與監察人的規模；財務透明程度則著眼於資訊的可接近性，並從資訊揭露的管道、頻率及資訊的種類三個層面來衡量財務資訊的可接近性。 　　本研究根據監察人制度與私立學校財務資訊可接近性的關係，發展三個假說，探討私立學校監察人制度之建立，是否與財務資訊揭露的管道能公平對待每一位欲取得資訊之人有關、是否與財務資訊揭露之頻率有關，以及是否與所揭露財務資訊之種類有關。為瞭解不同人對監察人制度與私校財務透明程度間之關係的看法是否不同，本研究又探討與私校有關的人士是否因身份之不同而對上述關係有不同的看法。本研究係以問卷蒐集資料，在設計問卷前，本研究訪談北部某私立技術學院之校長，辨認與監察人制度各層面有關的十個問題。本研究共發出問卷811份，回收份數130份，有效問卷109份。 　　根據實證分析，本研究所獲致的結論，為：一、當監察人的獨立性及專業性程度較高，且規模較大時，私校財務透明的程度即較高；而監察人制度對揭露資訊的種類，影響不大，僅監察人之專業，性與「租賃或買賣校地」資訊之揭露有關。二、對上述關係的看法，董事長與校務行政人員及老師未有顯著不同，但校務行政中的校長及會計主任，則顯著不同。三、對監察人的獨立性，受試者的信心較不足，但對其專業能力，則未顯現信心或缺，由於對後者的重視程度較高，整體而言，對監察人制度仍持較正面的看法。綜上所述，設立監察人制度與私校財務透明程度的增加間呈正相關，應可成立。因此，私立學校應以更開放的心胸，去看待監察人制度，雖然它並不是解決私校問題的唯一方法，但它不失為一個值得嘗試的方法。 / Financial irregularities of privately-fimded schools emerged one by one recently.These occurrences not only impact adversely on the achievement of educational goals but also lead to doubt on the worthiness of their existence. One way to solve such problem is to strengthen the effectiveness of internal controls. The Ministry of Education tries to amend the Private School Law and mandates the privately-funded schools to install an audit committee on the top of their board of directors in the bill in September, 2001. The attitude regarding the audit committee of the Ministry, however, has switched, from mandating to optional but encouraging. 　　Since the deliberation is first publicized, the board of directors who are under the supervision of several privately-funded schools oppose strongly, but others keeping silence may hold the opposite views. Therefore, this study investigates the general perceptions whether the installment of audit committee reduces the occurrences of financial irregularities and whether different people hold different views on the said question. Financial transparency is one way to avoid the financial difficulties. This study investigates if the new system affects the degree of financial transparency in privately-funded schools in responding the general perception question. Because function of audit committees is dependent on the members’independence and competence and size of the committee, this study investigates whether these features affect the degree of financial transparency. The financial transparency discussed focuses on the accessibility of financial information, and the measurement of accessibility, which are dependent in turn on the channel, the frequency, and the types of information disclosed. 　　This study develops three hypotheses based on the accessibility of financial information in privately-funded schools, and investigates whether the installment of such a system is correlated with the free access to, the frequency of the access of financial information, and types of information disclosed. Besides, this study also investigates whether people in different position (principals, accounting managers, chairman of the board, student's parents, teachers, administrators of the Ministry of Education or external auditors) hold different views on the above relation. 　　This study uses questionnaires to collect perceptions of different people. This study identifies ten questions for various aspects of audit committee in privately-funded schools before the questionnaire is finalized by interviewing a principal responses one privately-funded college. This study sends 811 questionnaires and receives 130; 109 are usable and analyses are based on these responses. 　　The conclusions of this study are: 　　1. The more independent and more professional of the committee member and the larger of a committee is, the higher financial transparency a privately-funded school can achieve, but the committee influences little on types information disclosed, only the information of "leasing and trading land" impaction the committee member's competence. 　　2. The views of the chairman of the board regarding the relation between the installment of audit committee and the degree of financial transparency are not different significantly with those of the administrative personnel and teachers in privately-funded schools, but principals and accounting managers held views different significantly. 　　3. The subjects lack confidence in audit committee member's independence, but trust their competence. Because they weigh the competence heavier than the independence, they think positively on the system as a whole.

No description available.

Submitted by Paulo Junior (paulo.jr@fgv.br) on 2010-12-14T20:44:57Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Sergio Louzada.pdf: 337853 bytes, checksum: 0f6dd9d7d5f9c7230ec9c2c4e8b388f3 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Paulo Junior(paulo.jr@fgv.br) on 2010-12-14T20:45:15Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Sergio Louzada.pdf: 337853 bytes, checksum: 0f6dd9d7d5f9c7230ec9c2c4e8b388f3 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2011-01-06T12:15:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sergio Louzada.pdf: 337853 bytes, checksum: 0f6dd9d7d5f9c7230ec9c2c4e8b388f3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-04-19 / This present work investigates the vertical accountability of the Brazilian Federal State Owned Enterprises –SOE through the analyses of their websites. For this, the work analyzed the definition of accountability in order to create a model of analyses with three dimensions; 'Transparency', 'Financial Transparency', and 'Interaction and Participation'. and a corresponding set of variables both rated by a panel of specialists. The results show that only 56% of the SOEs have accountability information in their websites, and 34% didn’t have any kind variables for the analyses of accountability. These observation lead to the conclusion that there is still space for vertical accountability of the SOEs through their website. / O estudo investiga a accountability vertical das empresas estatais federais brasileiras realizadas através dos portais web. Para tanto, foram levantadas, na literatura, informações relevantes para a melhor compreensão do alcance do termo accountability, de forma a permitir o desenvolvimento de modelo de análise a ser utilizado no trabalho. O modelo proposto compreende 3 dimensões: 'Transparência', 'Interação e Participação' e 'Prestação de Contas e Resultado' a cada dimensão corresponde um conjunto de variáveis, ponderadas junto a um painel de especialistas. Realizou-se então a análise da accountability vertical das empresas estatais através dos respectivos portais web. Constatou-se que apenas 56% das empresas estatais investigadas possuem informações relativas à accountability e que 34% dos portais web não tinham variáveis relativas às dimensões propostas no modelo. Tais constatações levam à conclusão de que há espaço para aumentar a accountability vertical das empresas estatais federais por meio dos portais web.

En dépit de son importance pratique, le secret des affaires n’est guère pris en compte par le droit français. Bien que mentionné par quelques textes épars, il ne peut être qualifié de notion juridique. Face aux lacunes de notre législation, les tribunaux sont contraints d’appliquer le droit commun pour protéger les informations économiques sensibles : or, l’article 1382 du Code civil, comme les textes réprimant le vol et le recel, ne sont pas adaptés. Pourtant, comme en témoignent certains systèmes juridiques étrangers, la protection du secret est nécessaire ; il convient donc d’en rechercher les fondements. Bien que justifiée, la sauvegarde des renseignements confidentiels doit toutefois être conciliée avec les autres intérêts en présence, tels que les droits particuliers à l’information, les principes directeurs du procès, la transparence financière ou encore la liberté du travail. Le but de cette étude est donc de cerner la notion de secret des affaires, puis de proposer des modalités de protection, en respectant les intérêts des tiers. / Despite its practical relevance, business secrecy remains barely recognized under French law. Even if various texts refer to that concept, it cannot be considered as a legal concept under French law. In order to face the defects of our law, courts are bound to apply ordinary law to guarantee the protection of sensitive business information. However, applying article 1382 of the French civil code (torts) as well as referring to the concepts of robbery or handling (criminal law) are inappropriate solutions. Nevertheless, some foreign legal systems have demonstrated that protecting business secrecy was necessary. Therefore, our study will seek the grounds of that need for protection. Protecting confidential data, although justified, must be compatible with other key principles: individual rights to information, civil trial practice standards, financial transparency or freedom of work. Thus, the purpose of that study is to delimitate the concept of business secrecy before suggesting new measures to protect it while preserving third parties beneficiaries.

Cette Thèse de sciences de gestion, se propose d’élucider les difficultés que rencontrent les acteurs du système bancaire comorien et apporter des solutions afin de lui garantir sa solidité, stabilité et enfin sa pérennité. Elle est divisée en deux parties. La première porte plus particulièrement sur le cadre national et internationale du système bancaire comorien. La deuxième met en évidence les banques comoriennes confrontées à la transparence financière et aux exigences de supervision prudentielle. Le premier titre de la première partie, tâche à mettre en lumière l’organisation actuelle du système bancaire comorien inspiré du modèle français (chapitre 1) et l’apport du développement récent de la finance islamique (chapitre 2) afin de combler le retard de la banque conventionnelle. La réorganisation de la Banque Centrale des Comores et la mise en place de la banque islamique locale, peuvent contribuer au changement radical du système bancaire comorien. Le deuxième titre, permet au régulateur et prêteur en dernier ressort (Banque Centrale des Comores) de prendre le modèle des normes prudentielles internationales proposées par le Comité de Bâle (Bâle II et III), pour réguler le système bancaire comorien afin de lui garantir sa solidité, stabilité et enfin sa pérennité (chapitre 1). A travers ces recommandations du comité de Bâle, nous avons apporté des solutions en élaborant la Matrice Msahazi Credit Scoring Corporation, destinée aux analyses des données des banques comoriennes contre un risque endogène (Chapitre2). Nous avons aussi élaboré d’autres matrices que les banques comoriennes se serviront pour la notation interne, des risques de contreparties (entreprises et particuliers) afin de lutter contre le risque exogène. La deuxième partie de cette Thèse suggère deux autres solutions : la première est l’exigence de transparence financière des banques comoriennes (Pilier 3 : Bâle2 et 3) afin de lutter contre les malversations financières orchestrées par certains agents (titre I). Le premier chapitre introduit l’objectif de la communication financière de manière générale et la manière dont le comité de Bâle (Bâle 2 et 3) recommande les banques de communiquer leurs informations financières (méthodes d’évaluations des risques et fonds propres). Le deuxième chapitre propose aux banques comoriennes et aux autorités de contrôles, les techniques de notation financière pratiquées au niveau internationale pour distinguer le niveau de solvabilité de la contrepartie. La deuxième solution, nous avons donné à la Banque Centrale des Comores, des techniques pour renforcer la supervision prudentielle (Pilier 2, Bâle 2 et 3), (titre II). Le premier chapitre exige d’une part la direction et le conseil d’administration de la banque de définir les techniques de contrôles, d’indentifications, d’évaluations, gestions des risques et les objectifs de fonds propre à atteindre. D’autre part, l’autorité de contrôle (Banque centrale des Comores) doit passer au crible tous ces outils de contrôle. Au deuxième et dernier chapitre de la recherche, nous avons proposé à la Banque Centrale des Comores des nouvelles méthodes de supervision prudentielle afin de garantir la solidité, stabilité et pérennité du système bancaire. Nous avons l’espoir que l’ensemble de ces suggestions contribueront à préserver la solidité, stabilité et pérennité du système bancaire comorien afin de financer le développement de l’économie comorienne et sortir le pays de la pauvreté. / This thesis on busness management, aims to elucidate the difficulties faced by the stakeholders of the Comorian banking system and to provide solutions to ensure its soundness, stability and sustainability. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first focuses specifically on the national and international context of the Comorian banking system. The second, highlights how the Comorian banks should adapt to the financial transparency and prudential supervision requirements. The first title of the first part, tries toshed light on the current organization of the Comorian banking system based on the French model (Chapter 1) and the contribution of the recent development of Islamic finance (Chapter 2) to close the gap in conventional banking. The reorganization of the Central Bank of the Comoros and the establishment of the local Islamic bank can contribute to a radical change in the Comorian banking system. The second title allows the regulator and lender of last resort (Central Bank of the Comoros ) to take the model of international prudential standards proposed by the Basel Committee (Basel II and III) to regulate the Comorian banking system in order to guarantee its soundness, stability and finally sustainability (Chapter 1). Through these recommendations of the Basel committee, we have provided solutions by developing Msahazi Credit Scoring Matrix Corporation, intended to analyse data of Comorian banks against endogenous risk (Chapter 2). We have also developed matrices other than Comorian banks used for internal rating of the counterparty risk (companies and individuals) to fight against exogenous risk. The second part of this thesis suggests two alternatives: the first is the requirement of financial transparency for Comorian banks (Pillar 3: Basel Conventions 2 and 3) in order to fight against embezzlement orchestrated by certain agents (Title I). The first chapter introduces the objective of financial reporting in general, and how the Basel Committee (Basel 2 and 3) asks banks to disclose their financial information (methods of risk assessments and equity). The second chapter provides credit rating techniques practiced at international level to the Comorian banks and supervisory authorities in order to distinguish the level of creditworthiness of companies and clients concerned. The second alternative we have given to the Central Bank of the Comoros is the techniques for strengthening prudential supervision (Pillar 2, Basel 2 and 3), (Title II) . The first chapter requires both the management and the bank's board of directors to define control techniques, identifications, assessments, risk managements and core capital goals. On the other hand, the supervisory authority (Comoros Central Bank) has to go through all these control tools. In the second and final chapter of the research, we propose to the Central Bank of the Comoros new prudential supervision methods to ensure the soundness, stability and sustainability of the banking system. We hope that all of these suggestions will help to preserve the soundness, stability and durability of the Comorian banking system in order to finance the development of the Comorian economy and lift the country out of poverty.