No description available.

Zugl.: Münster (Westfalen), Universiẗat, Diss., 2009.

Accounting guidance often contains examples which provide practitioners with a description of a hypothetical transaction and its appropriate accounting treatment. Despite this potential to influence accounting judgments, our understanding of how practitioners use such examples when making these judgments is limited. Relying on psychology theory, I propose that practitioners must first assess the level of similarity between the transaction and the example. I predict that when doing this, practitioners unknowingly use a biased cognitive process where they overweight shared aspects between the transactions. Using an experiment, I confirm this prediction and show that this bias causes practitioners to systematically assess similarity between a transaction and example as too high. Results also show that this causes practitioners to consistently overestimate the likelihood that their transaction also qualifies for the same treatment as any example they are given. My study provides insights on how and why examples can systematically affect accounting judgments and has implications for both standard setters and practitioners. / text

No description available.

No description available.

Zugl.: Siegen, Univ., Diss., 2006

Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Universiẗat, Diss., 2007.

Zugl.: Oldenburg, Univ., Diss., 2009

Bachelor-Arbeit Univ. St. Gallen, 2008.

During the last three decades, financial reporting, performance measurement and accountability for the use of resources by the public sector have received a great deal of attention in numerous countries, especially in the developed world. This study is concerned with exploring these issues in the public sector of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and, specifically, its central government. Following an initial introductory chapter a detailed analysis of the literature relating to financial reporting and performance measurement in the public sector is undertaken. This is then developed through a detailed study of the financial reporting and auditing requirements specified under UAE law. This analysis reveals a number of weaknesses in the system of governmental reporting adopted in the UAE. As a result of the literature survey and the findings relating to the system of financial reporting by central government practiced in the UAE two key areas are then developed through the research methodology outlined in the text. Firstly, issues relating to government financial reports are examined. These include the: importance of financial reports, frequency and purposes of using financial reports, quality of financial reports, potential ways of improving financial reports, external potential users of financial reports and, finally in this section, reasons that prevent the users from reading or using governmental financial reports in the UAE. Secondly, various issues relating to performance measurement in the public sector are also discussed. These concern: the importance of non-financial information, methods of comparison, reasons for conducting performance measurement, users of performance measurement reports, reasons that prevent government units from carrying out performance measurement, procedures undertaken by the external audit for measuring performance, the quality of audit reports, ways of improving audit reports, the external potential users of government audit reports, and the reasons that prevent the external auditor carrying out performance auditing in governmental units in the UAE. Finally appropriate conclusion on the basis of the analysis is presented.