The purpose of this dissertation is to compare the evolution of the German accounting profession with that in the United States from the late 1800's to the early 1930's. Included is an analysis of the interaction of the accounting profession with each nation's corporate/ banking institutions in influencing financial reporting and the demand for audits.

This research analyzes the relationship between specific firm characteristics and firms' settlement/replacement plan decisions under Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No. 88 (FAS88). I examined firms that effected either (i) a settlement of their pension obligations without a benefit plan termination or (ii) a partial termination with a replacement benefit plan or (iii) a complete termination with no replacement of a benefit plan.

As long as one security is classified into AFS category, I document that banks strategically time the recognitions of gains and losses on AFS securities to smooth earnings, to meet earnings targets, to reduce regulatory costs, or to facilitate seasonal equity offering. These evidences collaborate with my previous results that banks prefer classifying credit risky securities into AFS rather than into trading category. / Finally, I investigate market reactions to fair value changes on AFS securities and to trading revenues from trading assets. I show that trading revenues are more persistent, with greater value relevance, and drive more significant stock returns. This evidence indicates that artificially classifying securities which are held for trading purpose into AFS category may have negative impacts on firm values. / Given the investment decisions made by the managers, the second issue studied in this thesis is the financial reporting decisions made by banks. To elaborate, banks have discretions to classify the debt securities into available-for-sale (AFS) category vs. trading category depending on the purpose of the holding, while the classification decisions have very different impacts on firms' income statement. Therefore, I study how accounting treatments of AFS and trading category and their different impacts on firms' income statements affect reporting decisions. I find banks inclined to classify credit-riskier securities into AFS rather than into trading category, when banks have weak interest revenues, have high level of income-increasing discretional accruals, have concentrated assets, or have high level of risky assets. But I do not find classification decision is related to bank's capital adequacy ratio. / Keywords: Bank holding companies; debt security investments; managerial compensation; trading assets; available-for-sale; SFAS 115; gains trading. / This study examines U.S. banks' investment behaviors as well as their financial reporting decisions on debt security investments. Particularly, I focus on two separate but related issues. The first issue examined is whether and how managerial incentives, influenced by the compensation contracts, affect managers' investment decisions on debt securities in the U.S. banking industry. Using a sample composed of top 1,000 bank holding companies from 2001 to 2009, I find that managers, when their wealth is more sensitive to stock return volatility, tend to structure the firms' debt investments with a higher proportion of credit risky securities. Provided that price of credit risky debt securities slumped during the recent financial crisis, that empirical evidence is consistent with the view that managerial compensation may induce excess risk-taking in the U.S. banking industry. The finding is relevant to both researchers and practitioners when they consider restructuring bankers' compensation. / Zhou, Chunquan. / Advisers: Woody Y. W. Wu; Danqing Young. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-08(E), Section: A. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-83). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.

This empirical study is concerned with the usefulness of proposed supplementary disclosures for oil and gas producers to financial analysts in valuing a company. It is concerned with what supplementary information is being used, to what extent it is being used and which type of information is used most. Three main research procedures are employed. In the first procedure, the Mann-Whitney U Test is applied to determine any significant difference between valuing an oil and gas producing company using basic financial statements and ratio data, and valuing the same company with this information plus the proposed disclosures. The second procedure involves applying the chi-square and Cramer's V statistics to determine whether the disclosure information caused switching in valuation method used for each of the cases. The third procedure tests for significant differences between financial ratios used for each case by employing the test of differences between two proportions. Additional evaluation attempts to determine analysts' perceived usefulness of each of the schedules of the proposed disclosures

The collapse of Enron and its aftermath has put unprecedented focus on the accounting profession and its role in the self-regulatory system.

The spiraling costs of healthcare is a paramount issue in the healthcare arena. Today cost containment programs and budgetary costs affect all hospital departments, especially nursing. The purpose of this study was to identify the current and planned mechanisms in which selected hospitals cost out nursing care. The utilization of patient classification systems and patient care hours has also explored in relation to costing out nursing care. The significance of the study was to establish an information base for hospitals regarding methodologies to cost out nursing care and to describe current methodologies of costing out nursing care in select hospitals. The sample was a convenience sample of 30 hospitals identified as charging for nursing services and utilizing variable billing for nursing services. Thirty questionnaires were mailed. Procedures for the protection of human subject rights were followed. Thirteen questionnaires (43%) were returned with eleven (36%) questionnaires fully completed. The results indicated that approximately one-half (50%) of the hospitals currently bill patients for care actually received based on a patient acuity level. Nursing was primarily responsible for costing out nursing care once the program had been implemented. The costs of nursing care included a variety of items and varied across institutions. The majority (45.5%) included salary, benefits, indirect administrative costs and indirect overhead costs. Almost all the respondents stated the hospital used a patient classification system (91%) and the concept "hours of care" (100%). The majority (54.5%) of the hospitals had patient class systems adopted from another hospital. The time included in hours of care varied greatly between the institutions. Despite the variance, all the facilities related hours of care to acuity levels of the patient classification system either a pre-determined hour of care requirement or an acuity level generated by hours of care determined. Findings from this study concluded that costing out nursing care is a viable method in which the nursing profession can charge for nursing care rendered. The data concerning methodologies to cost out nursing care demonstrated several of the limitations defined in nursing literature, e.g. variations in patient classification systems and variations of items included in hours of care. Therefore the conclusion was that although the majority of respondent hospitals cost out nursing care, the charges vary due to the variation in methodologies. The profession of nursing must work to overcome these variations and make the concept of costing out nursing care a commonly performed practice. / School of Nursing

This research investigates the information content of the translation information resulting from exchange rate fluctuations. Two hypotheses are examined. The dollar movement hypotheses investigate whether there is a positive relationship between security valuation and the translation information and whether the market assigns different weights to translation gains and losses in both the depreciating and appreciating exchange rate environments. The geographic concentration hypothesis tests whether the market's response to the translation information is geographically sensitive. Prior research on SFAS No. 8 and SFAS No. 52 has concentrated on the price and trading volume responses to the deliberations and issuance of these two accounting statements. Soo and Soo (1994) examine the long-term effect of the disclosure requirement under SFAS No. 52 on MNEs' security prices from 1981 to 1987. However, they fail to address two important issues pertinent to the MNE research--the effects of exchange rate changes and the geographic concentration. The dollar movement hypotheses provide strong evidence that under both the appreciating and depreciating exchange rate environments, a positive relationship exists between security returns and the translation information when MNEs disclose translation losses in stockholders' equity. The findings also provide evidence for a positive or at least non-negative relationship between security returns and the translation information when MNEs disclose translation gains. The findings provide evidence that the positive relationship is greater in appreciating than in depreciating exchange rate environment for losses, but no evidence of such a difference exists for gains. The evidence also indicates that the market reacts more to the translation information when translation losses are reported than when translation gains are reported in both exchange rate environments. The examination of the impact of the geographic concentration of MNEs' foreign operations provides limited evidence to support the geographic concentration hypothesis. One possible explanation for the weak findings is that the larger degree of the aggregation of some of the geographic disclosures prevents the market from impounding the geographic information.

The purpose of this research was to empirically examine the effect of the establishment of outside audit committees on the objectivity of the management results-reporting practices of those companies that established such committees in response to the New York Stock Exchange mandate effective June 30, 1978. Management income smoothing behavior is taken as a measurable surrogate for the objectivity of the management results-reporting practices. This research involved the testing of one research problem. The research question asks, "Will the establishment of outside audit committees by companies that had no such committees prior to the New York Stock Exchange mandate effective June 30, 1978, be associated with a decrease in the degree of smoothing in the net income series for the period after that date relative to the degree of smoothing prior to that date?" The answer to this question required the selection of an experimental and a control group. Each group was composed of fifty New York Stock Exchange listed firms. Linear and semi-log regression models were used to measure each firm's degree of income smoothing (defined as reducing the variability of a net income series about its trend line). The change in mean square errors of the experimental and control groups was compared using the chisquare and median tests. Neither the chi-square or the median test found a statistically significant increase in the objectivity of the management results-reporting function for the firms that established outside audit committees in response to the NYSE mandate effective June 30, 1978.

This research examines how experience and missing information affect judgments of tax return preparers. Tax return preparers may often be faced with the problem of incomplete information, and their responses to this problem may be conditioned by whether or not they recognize information is missing. Based on the Holland et al.'s cognitive theory of induction as applied to tax judgment by Marchant et al., it was hypothesized that experienced tax preparers would correctly classify more items as to their relevance to a specific tax issue than novice tax preparers. Additionally, it was hypothesized that the strength of recommendations of tax preparers who had no relevant information missing would be greater than the strength of recommendations of tax preparers who had relevant information missing and were prompted that information was missing. Lastly, it was hypothesized that prompting that relevant information was missing would have a greater effect on the strength of recommendations of tax return preparers with lesser specific experience than it would on the strength of recommendations of tax return preparers with greater specific experience. The results suggest that experienced tax preparers do recognize the relevance of information to a greater degree than novice tax preparers. There was no significant difference, however, in the strengths of recommendation of tax preparers who had no missing information and those who were prompted that information was missing. There was a significant difference in the strengths of recommendations of tax preparers with lesser specific experience who had been prompted that relevant information was missing and those who had not been prompted that relevant information was missing. Among tax preparers with greater specific experience, however, there was no significant difference between the two groups. These results suggest that tax preparers with greater specific experience recognized that relevant information was missing without being prompted, while tax return preparers with lesser specific experience did not.

This study had two basic objectives. The first was to determine the stock market reactions to the pension policy deliberations. The second was to further our understanding of the significance of the FASB's due process. The author selected 13 critical events that preceded passage of SFAS No. 87 and designed a quasi experiment to examine the stock market reaction around the above events. Two portfolios were constructed to test the hypotheses. The first portfolio consisted of firms in the experimental group (firms sponsoring a defined benefit pension plan) and the second portfolio consisted of firms in the control group (firms sponsoring a defined contribution pension plan). The two portfolios were matched on the basis of SIC code, debt to equity ratio and assets.