Forecasting firms' earnings has long been an interest of market participants and academics. Traditional forecasting studies in a multivariate time series setting do not take into account that the timing of market data release for a specific time period of observation is often spread over several days or weeks. This thesis focuses on the separation of announcement timing or data release and the use of econometric real-time methods, which we refer to as an updated vector autoregression (VAR) forecast, to predict data that have yet to be released. In comparison to standard time series forecasting, we show that the updated forecasts will be more accurate the higher the correlation coefficients among the standard VAR innovations are. Forecasting with the sequential release of information has not been studied in the VAR framework, and our approach to U.S. nonfarm payroll employment and the six Canadian banks shows its value. By using the updated VAR forecast, we conclude that there are relative efficiency gains in the one-step-ahead forecast compared to the ordinary VAR forecast, and compared to professional consensus forecasts. Thought experiments emphasize that the release ordering is crucial in determining forecast accuracy. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2010-04-30 12:34:42.629

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Diploma thesis deals with the issue of payroll accounting. Payroll accounting is modulated by wide range of legislation. The main goal is to create a comprehensive picture of how wages are calculated and what changes in this area occurred in 2007 - 2009. The individual chapters are examples, which tries to introduce the method of calculating wages. In a separate chapter describes how to calculate wages in a particular company.

Graduation thesis deals with the outsourcing of payroll accounting. The first part of graduation thesis provides the information about outsourcing as such, specifications of the basic terms, the historical development and the life cycle of outsourcing. The part about outsourcing of payroll accounting summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of using outsourcing from the client and provider perspective. A practical example compares the internal and external processing of payroll accounting.

Policy makers believe that there are ghost workers, persons who do not work yet receive salaries, on Ghana's public sector payroll. However, little is known about the factors that create opportunities for ghost workers. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to extend Cressy's conceptualization of the fraud triangle theory to test the applicability of Reinikka and Svennson's graft estimation model by using nonprobability quota sampling to select 85 heads of public agencies for participation in a cross-sectional survey. The research questions focused on the relationship between size of government agency, the estimated number of opportunities for ghost workers, and the dependent variable of occurrence of ghost workers in the public sector in Ghana. Correlational and multiple regression analysis was used to discern the relationship between the independent variables of agency size and opportunities for ghost workers and the dependent variable of number of ghost workers. Results revealed a statistically significant, positive relationship between the number of opportunities for ghost workers and the number of ghost workers. However, there was a negative relationship between the size of government agencies and both the number of opportunities for ghost workers and the number of ghost workers. The implications for social change include recommendations to revise the Financial Administration Act of Ghana by introducing new controls in the payroll administration at the Controller and Accountant General's Department to eliminate ghost workers from the payroll so that public funds can be saved to provide more public services for Ghanaians.

Diploma thesis deals with wage issues in the private sector in the Czech Republic. Its aim is to provide a comprehensive picture of the most important aspects related to calculation of salary components and their capture in double-entry accounting. Attention is also paid to insurance and taxation that are very closely assciated with it. The indiviual chapters solve the issue from the legal, accounting and tax view. The last chapter is devoted to a comprehensive example that illustrates the calculation of wages to be paid with regard to possible situations such as a overtime, standby duty, holiday, temporary incapacity or business trip.

The graduation thesis is focused on payroll accounting according to valid legislation of year 2012.The aim was to explain the payroll in the business sector with regard to labor regulations, the finance accounting, social insurance and health insurance, income tax from employment. The graduate thesis is based on the assumption that the employees working under the same conditions of employment with the same-time and with the same wage conditions have the same net salary to be paid. Chapters are devoted to the issue of labor relations, the calculation of net earnings, deductions for health and social insurance, taxation and payroll deductions from wages. The original assumption was not clearly confirmed, because to the calculation of net earnings enter a number of aspects.

This thesis studies the effects on the unemployment rate and average income due to the payroll tax cuts for young workers in Sweden. The method that has been used is a difference-in-difference approach with two different control groups. The unemployment rate for Swedish individuals at age 15-24 has been matched towards individuals at the same age in Finland and Denmark. The data behind the estimations is picked from the database of Eurostat. The results indicate an increase in the unemployment rate, contrary to the expectations from the theoretical framework in the subject. One possible explanation for a lack of increase in employment due to a targeted tax cut is shifting, meaning that the lowered cost for firms is shifted onto the employees’ wages. However, no significant results on the wage effect were found, so no such conclusion can be made. The explanation could lay in modeling problems, a growing labor force or the supply of labor (which may choose other alternatives than employment). By the results of this report, the main conclusion is that the payroll tax reductions did not reduce the high unemployment rate among young individuals in Sweden.

This thesis comprises four chapters, in two parts. The first part examines the result of a Swedish payroll tax reduction; first from the perspective of the worker, then from that of the employer. The second half of the thesis concerns subjective well-being, both from an individual and from an aggregate viewpoint. Payroll Taxes and Youth Labor Demand. In 2007, the Swedish payroll tax was reduced substantially for young workers. This paper examines whether targeted payroll tax reductions are effective in raising youth employment. We estimate a small impact, both on employment and on wages. However, the effect differs markedly across ages, with 4–5 times higher impact on 22–23 year-olds compared to 25-year-olds. Additionally, the employment effects are strongly procyclical, approaching zero in the deep recession. We calculate that the estimated cost per created job is more than four times that of directly hiring workers at the average wage. Payroll Taxes and Firm Performance. The Swedish payroll tax reform of 2007 had the effect that firms' average social fees came to depend on the age structure of their employees. This makes it possible to estimate how firms respond to shocks in labor costs. We find a significant, but very small effect on gross investments, and a negative, but not statistically significant, impact on labor productivity. There are no effects on exit rates or profitability. Beyond Income: The Importance for Life Satisfaction of Having Access to a Cash Margin. We study how life satisfaction among adult Swedes is influenced by having access to a cash margin, i.e. a moderate amount of money that could be acquired on short notice either through own savings, by loan from family or friends, or by other means. We find that cash margin is a strong and robust predictor of life satisfaction, also when controlling for individual fixed-effects and socio-economic conditions, including income. This suggests that cash margin captures something beyond wealth. On Aggregating Subjective Well-Being. This paper discusses the assumptions underlying the aggregation of individually measured well-being. Any aggregation method is associated with measurability assumptions regarding the underlying well-being measure, as well as moral philosophical assumptions with respect to how individual well-being is weighted into a composite metric. I compare welfare across a set of countries, under alternative aggregation methods, and find that countries often can be ranked under comparatively weak measurement assumptions, and, equally important, that aggregation methods can be chosen so as to refrain from strong ethical preconceptions.

A modalidade de crédito consignado para aposentados e pensionistas do INSS foi introduzida no final de 2004, e a partir desta data houve um ritmo muito rápido de contratação do novo produto, que se tornou a principal modalidade de crédito no segmento. Estudamos a difusão do novo produto através de um modelo baseado em escolha discreta, e efetuamos a decomposição da expansão em dois fatores: crescimento do mercado de crédito e substituição de outros créditos. Obtivemos que, durante os primeiros 12 meses de sua introdução, compreendidos entre Set/04 e Ago/05, foi onde houve o maior crescimento ajustado e a expansão foi caracterizada pelo crescimento do mercado de crédito, enquanto nos 25 meses subsequentes (Set/05 a Set/07), o crescimento ajustado foi menor e a expansão foi caracterizada por substituição de outros créditos. / Payroll loans for social security (INSS) beneficiaries were introduced at September of 2004. From this date to the end of studied period (Sep/07), this loan type had been adopted at a very fast rate, eventually becoming the main product in its credit market segment. We studied the diffusion of this new credit product using a choice based diffusion model, and decomposed growth in two factors: credit market expansion and substitution of other loans. In the first 12 months from introduction, between Sep/04 e Aug/05, where most of adjusted growth was observed, growth was motivated by credit market expansion, where in the following 25 months (Sep/05 to Sep/07), adjusted growth rate was lower, and growth was motivated by substitution of other loans.