This thesis proves that intangible assets are impossible to accurately value because of their inherently complex attributes. Intangibles have always existed in the market, but their presence has nearly quadrupled in the last few decades due to the Information Revolution. This technological breakthrough was characterized by the globalization of knowledge, communication, and trade. This dissemination of knowledge due to the infrastructural changes of both the telecommunication and transportation industries transformed the economy from a ‘product-driven’ market to a ‘knowledge-driven’ market. This surge in intangible assets is significant because it proves that “knowledge-driven” elements are now material to company value. As such, accurate measurement of intangible assets is essential to preserving the reliability of financial statements. Current accounting practices largely ignore the value created by intangible asset and this has serious consequences for investors, firms, and the economy as a whole. Insufficient accounting of intangible assets distorts company value, increases the cost of capital, and compromises the reliability of financial statements. While it is utterly impossible to create accounting standards that will, without fail, accurately measure all intangible assets as well as take into account their lifespans, volatility, increasing economies of scale, partial excludability, and lack of tradability, this thesis proposes a way to help mitigate the disparity between what financial statements recognize and what companies actually generate.

These two mixed method studies are among the first to focus on resilience among Canadian Aboriginal (i.e., First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) youth living in out-of-home care. The first study was quantitative and consisted of cross-sectional and longitudinal components. For the cross-sectional investigation, the participants consisted of 510 First Nations (237 females, 273 males aged 10-16 years), 39 Métis (15 females, 24 males aged 10-16 years), and 10 Inuit young people (2 females, 8 males aged 10-16 years) who were drawn from an ongoing study of young people in out-of-home care in Ontario collected during 2007-2008. The second Canadian adaptation of the Assessment and Action Record (AAR-C2-2006; Flynn, Ghazal, & Legault, 2006) from the ongoing Ontario Looking After Children (OnLAC) project was used to collect data. The criterion variables were the young person’s self-esteem, score on a suicidality index, educational performance, pro-social behaviour, and positive emotional and behavioural development. The predictor variables included the young person’s gender, ethnicity, age, behavioural difficulties, cognitive impairments, attainment of LAC goals, and number of developmental assets. The longitudinal investigation used the same design as study one, but examined the OnLAC data for year eight (2008-2009) in following 260 young people from the sample in study one. The second study was qualitative and involved interviewing 21 First Nations children and adolescents residing in out-of-home care in northern Ontario to obtain their views about resilience and the factors related to the presence or absence of resilient outcomes. The results provided some support for the hypothesis, in that a greater number of developmental assets were related to more positive outcomes on four of the five criterion variables. The results of the focus groups and in-depth interviews suggested that family members, members of the community (coaches), teachers, and child welfare workers, all play important roles in fostering the youths’ success.

The counterfeiting industry continues to grow worldwide, valued today at $461 billion according to the Global IP Center’s 2016 Report. This proliferation of counterfeiting has permeated many industries, but poses a unique threat to the luxury retail sector. Many factors have precipitated the expansion of this industry: expanded trade and manufacturing networks, enhanced technology, the rise of e-commerce, the globalization of trade, and others. Long viewed as a necessary evil in the luxury business, this booming counterfeit industry threatens retailers and governments alike. For individual retailers, counterfeiting deprives them of revenues, increases anti-counterfeiting expenses, devalues the brand, and disincentivizes growth and innovation. As a result, governments suffer slowed economic growth, higher unemployment and decreased tax revenues. Despite the economic and accounting consequences of luxury counterfeiting, steps can be taken to mitigate its impact. Legislation that defines and protects intellectual property rights, brand enforcement tools, supply chain management, public and private sector partnerships, authentication technology and consumer education present opportunities for building a strong anti-counterfeiting strategy. My research examines the luxury counterfeiting industry from its origins, investigating its history and the reasons for its rise in current global conditions. Taking an accounting-based perspective, I address both the ramifications of the luxury counterfeiting industry and propose strategies to combat it. Curtailing the expansion of this lucrative, black-market industry will be difficult and costly for luxury retailers and governments alike, but given the growing threat it poses around the world, it is in their best interest to pursue some of these proposed strategies.

Depuis son institution en 1989, et après une première suppression de deux ans, l'Impôt de Solidarité sur la Fortune suscite de nombreuses interrogations. De ces interrogations découle un débat récurrent et de plus en plus présent au sein de la classe politique française : faut-il conserver une telle imposition dans le système fiscal français ? Qualifié d'Impôt sur les Grandes Fortunes lors de sa première apparition, celui-ci doit son maintien à des considérations tant idéologiques qu'économiques, de par la garantie par sa présence d'une certaine justice sociale et fiscale, et de la manne financière directe qu'il apporte à l'Etat. Aussi, il doit sa survie à sa capacité à faire plus contribuer les plus riches, ce qui le rend populaire auprès d'un grand nombre d'électeurs. A l'opposé de ces considérations, cet impôt regroupe bon nombre de détracteurs, arguant principalement du fait que sa présence suscite des pertes colossales pour l'économie du pays, conséquemment à sa faculté à rebuter les grandes fortunes, aussi bien françaises qu'étrangères, avec toutes les répercussions qui en découlent. Il sera fait dans cette thèse la balance entre ces argumentations pour savoir si oui ou non l'ISF est toujours légitime en France. / Since his institution in 1989, and after a first abolition of two years, the French wealth tax arouses numerous questioning. Of these questioning ensues a recurring and more and more present debate within the French political class: is it necessary to keep such taxation in the French fiscal system? Qualified as wealth tax during its first appearance, this one owes his preservation to considerations so ideological as economic, due to the guarantee by its presence of a certain social and fiscal justice, and a direct financial basket which it brings to the State. So, the French wealth tax owes his survival to his capacity to make more contribute the richest, fact that makes it popular among the voters. Contrary to these considerations, this tax includes a lot of detractors, putting forward mainly because of colossal losses for the economy of the country, as a result of its power to pall the big fortunes, so French as foreign, with all the repercussions which ensue from it. The balance between these argumentations will be made in this thesis to know if yes or not the French Wealth tax is still justifiable in France.

The relationship between finance and the real economy which has been the subject of centuries old debates, gained renewed prominence with the relative and unprecedented growth of the financial sector over the last few decades. Finance has changed not only in terms of its size compared to other sectors, but also in terms of the nature of its products, and how it affects outcomes in the real economy. This has become known as financialisation. Research in other places has shown that the financial sector has grown at the expense of the real economy, as it has negatively impacted real investment. This occurred against the backdrop of non-financial corporations (NFCs) diverting more of their surpluses to the financial sector in the form of financial payout and financial investment. This research project studies the relationship between financialisation and the real economy in South Africa. Using aggregated data of all listed firms (with the exception of financial companies) on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange between 1971 and 2012 the impact of financialisation on real investment is empirically tested. Two channels in the form of financial payout (dividend and interest payments) and financial income (dividend and interest income) through which funds flow between the real economy and finance are analysed. We find that increased financial activity by NFCs may have a negative impact on real capital investment. Financial income presents more robust results than financial payout which may be an indication that the crowding out effect is a serious problem in South Africa.

Le transfert d'une entreprise, n'ayant ni de personnalité juridique, ni de patrimoine propre se traduit par une cession, directe ou indirecte, des actifs affectés à l'exploitation de l'entreprise ainsi que des droits et obligations qui y sont attachés. Elle peut résulter de différentes modalités techniques juridiques dont la finalité est la même : le transfert du pouvoir entrepreneurial. Il s'agit de la vente et de l'apport d'un fonds de commerce. Lorsque l'entreprise est organisée en société, cela comprend également la prise de contrôle par l'achat de droits sociaux et l'augmentation de capital réservée ainsi que la fusion-absorption. Utilisées pour répondre à des objectifs différents, ces techniques posent toutes des problèmes juridiques importants, tant à l'égard du cédant qu'à l'égard du cessionnaire. Ce travail de recherche tente d'analyser, à travers une approche pluridisciplinaire, les obstacles qui peuvent gêner la conclusion et l'exécution de l'opération de cession ainsi que les moyens de les éviter ou de les contrer afin d'assurer une sécurité optimale aux parties. Les régimes juridiques applicables à chacune de ces techniques et les contextes fiscaux qui leur sont associés sont passés en revue. Les mesures légales et conventionnelles de protection des salariés, des créanciers, des cocontractants et des concurrents qui risquent de voir leurs intérêts menacés sont intégrées dans l'analyse afin de s'assurer de l'opportunité et de la portée de l'opération à l'égard des tiers / The transfer of a business, having neither legal status nor its own assets, results in a, direct or indirect, disposal of the assets assigned to the business activity including the rights and obligations attached thereto. This transfer can result from various legal methods having the same purpose: to transfer the business decisional power. The methods concerned are the sale and the contribution of the business as a going concern (fonds de commerce). When the business is incorporated, the transfer may also result from a takeover by purchase of equity interests or reserved share capital increase as well as from a merger. These legal methods are used to meet various objectives. However, they all generate legal hurdles both vis-a-vis the transferor and the transferee. This thesis attempts to analyse, by a multi-disciplinary approach, the obstacles that may impede the conclusion and the execution of the transfer of ownership as well as the means of avoiding or circumventing those obstacles in order to reach the most desirable security for the parties. The legal regimes applicable to each one of these legal methods as well as the pertaining tax liabilities are reviewed. The legal and contractual protecting measures for employees, creditors, co-contractors and competitors who are likely to see their interests threatened are included in this analysis in order to measure the relevancy and the impact of the transfer of ownership with regard to third parties

This dissertation consists of four chapters. The first chapter developed a new warning system for international currency crises. The existing crisis indicators in the literature are essentially static. We examine the relationship between the foreign reserves dynamics and currency crises. It is shown that rapid reserve depletion is a prominent feature before the collapse of the exchange rate system. Our model provides clear warning signals for policy makers to take actions before the reserves has reached a critical value that heralds the arrival of a full-blown crisis. The second chapter employed a competing risk model to investigate the crisis-driven exit and orderly exit from fixed exchange rate regime for the period 1972-2001. It is found that the time spent within a regime is itself a significant determinant of the probability of an exit. Different types of exits exhibit different patterns of duration dependence. Crisis-driven exits have a positive duration dependence pattern while orderly exits show a negative duration dependence pattern, even after controlling for country specific characteristics and unobserved heterogeneity. The Competing Risk model yields several interesting results. It is found that the more open the economy, the lower the likelihood of leaving an exchange rate peg, and that the higher the trade concentration, the lower the probability of an orderly exit. Further, financial openness increases the probability of having an orderly exit. There is also strong evidence that a lower reserve growth rate and the incidence of bank crisis are associated with a higher likelihood of crisis driven exits. The third chapter examines whether the gains from incentive realignment have driven corporations out of the public security market. It is shown that going private transactions are due to the reduction in the diversification gains from the public market. For firms whose managers own most equity and are highly leveraged, they have low incentive gains prior to the public-to-private transaction. Such firms go private because of financial distress and dwindling profitability. These kinds of going-private activities are counter-cyclical. On the other hand, a financially healthy firm with a low managerial ownership has high anticipated incentive gains. The gain from incentive realignment is the dominant factor for these going-private transactions. Such firms go private because of an increase in profitability or an improvement in financial distress. We show that these going-private activities are pro-cyclical. The fourth chapter investigates the sources of economy fluctuations in China since its economic reform in 1978. Under the framework of a standard neoclassical open economy model with time-varying frictions (wedge), we study the relative importance of efficiency, labor, investment and foreign debt wedges on recent business cycles phenomena in China. The business accounting procedure suggests that productivity best explains the behavior of aggregate economic variables in China throughout the 1978-2006 periods. Labor wedge plays a major role in explaining the movement of labor enforcement. Foreign debt wedge and investment wedge primarily affect the composition of output between consumption, investment and trade balance, and have a modest role in explaining the fluctuation of output. Our results imply that the reform on inefficiency factor utilization and labor market rigidity should be a focus of future government policies. / He, Qing. / Adviser: Tai Leung Chong. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 71-01, Section: A, page: 0276. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-143). / 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. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

The thesis is focused on the treatment of long-term tangible assets in IFRS and Czech accounting legislation, and discusses the issue of its reporting and valuation.

This research has investigated factors that affect the successful commercialization of intellectual capital. The concept of social constructs of meaning for the interview participants provides the fundamental perspective of this research. The research was undertaken on the basis of a constructivist ontology, the epistemology was interpretivist, and a qualitative methodology was used. A constructivist ontology was selected due to the research aim to understand the perceptions of the interview participants. The interpretivist approach provided the framework to interpret meaning of the perceptions in the appropriate business context. The data collection methods included unstructured interviews of people holding key decision making positions within their organizations. The conceptual nature of intellectual capital and commercialization enabled the research to be viewed from a phenomenological perspective and aspects of grounded theory were applied in seeking meaning from interviewee perceptions to surface a theoretical model. The data analysis included coding of the interview transcripts utilizing NVivo qualitative research software and sorting the data into nodes. The nodes represented categories of information which became the foundations of the constructs. These nodes were examined for relationship and meaning until a theoretical model emerged from the data. The findings culminated in six (6) main constructs which were subsequently aggregated to form a composite model of factors which influence the commercialization process. / In addition a further discovery was made in terms of an `Intellectual Capital Approach' model which enables a classification and hierarchical relationship of intellectual capital to be mapped as a starting point for problem solving and strategy formulation. The results of this research have immediate application to business in terms of informing management about identification of intellectual capital and to consider alternative scenarios for wealth creation by way of commercialization.

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