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This study examined subjective numeracy and its relationship with accounting judgements on probability issues.

A subjective numeracy scale (SNS) questionnaire was distributed to 231 accounting students to measure self-evaluated numeracy. Modified Bayesian reasoning tasks were applied in an accounting-related probability estimation, manipulating presentation formats.

The study revealed a positive relationship between self-evaluated numeracy and performance in accounting probability estimation. The findings suggest that switching the format of probability expressions from percentages to frequencies can improve the performance of participants with low self-evaluated numeracy.

Adding objective numeracy measurements could enhance results. Future numeracy research could add objective numeracy items and assess whether this influences participants' self-perceived numeracy. Based on this sample population of accounting students, the findings may not apply to large populations of accounting-information users.

Investors' ability to exercise sound judgement depends on the accuracy of their probability estimations. Manipulating the format of probability expressions can improve probability estimation performance in investors with low self-evaluated numeracy.

This study identified a significant performance gap among participants in performing accounting probability estimations: those with high self-evaluated numeracy performed better than those with low self-evaluated numeracy. The authors also explored a method other than additional training to improve participants' performance on probability estimation tasks and discovered that frequency formats enhanced the performance of participants with low self-evaluated numeracy.

This paper aims to examine the association between financial reporting quality in target companies and acquisition profitability in a sample of 280 acquisitions in South Korea between 2002 and 2011.

Using the accruals quality measure developed by McNichols (2002) as a proxy for financial reporting quality, it was found that high-quality financial reporting in target companies is associated with more profitable acquisitions for the acquirer, as measured by the acquirer’s announcement returns.

It was found that high-quality financial reporting in target companies is associated with more profitable acquisitions for the acquirer, as measured by the acquirer’s announcement returns. This finding suggests that higher-quality accounting information leads to better decision-making during acquisitions. It was also found that the importance of financial reporting quality increases when information about the target company is scarce. In addition, it was found that the financial reporting quality of target companies is less important when the agency costs of the acquirer are high.

This analysis also complements several recent papers that examine target firm accounting information and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) returns (Shalev and Martin, 2009; McNichols and Stubben, 2012). By expanding this analysis, the authors help to provide a more complete understanding of how target firm’s accounting quality relates to the valuation of the target company and future expected synergies in M&A deal practice.

This study is one of a growing body of literature on the relations between financial reporting quality and investment decisions (Bens and Monahan, 2004; Biddle and Hilary, 2006; Hope and Thomas, 2008; McNichols and Stubben, 2008; Biddle et al., 2009; Francis and Martin, 2010). These results extend and generalize the results of prior studies, in that data pertinent to acquisition profitability of M&As in South Korea are used.

Recent research examines the implications of components of accruals for future profitability. Because the persistence of earnings varies with the level of company profitability, we expect differences between profitable and loss‐making companies in the association between components of accruals and future profitability. Using the approach adopted by Richardson, Sloan, Soliman and Tuna (2006) we find evidence suggesting that the components of accruals related to revenue growth and to change in asset turnover are less persistent than the cash flow component of earnings for profitable Australian companies. For loss‐making companies, however, the persistence of the accrual component of earnings is found to be higher than for the cash flow component of earnings, suggesting that the accrual component is more informative than the cash flow component in explaining period ahead profitability for many currently unprofitable companies.

This research seeks to examine whether two relevant characteristics, source objectivity and internal control effectiveness, influence how auditors evaluate evidence items supporting accounting estimates.

A controlled experiment approach with a sample of 24 auditors from one large international firm.

Results indicate that effective internal controls reduce the impact of relying on internal as opposed to external evidence items. Results also suggest that auditors place reliance on internal control effectiveness when they evaluate external evidence items.

Recent professional trends, such as the demand for faster financial reporting, put pressure on auditors to rely on internal rather than more persuasive external evidence items. Relying on less persuasive evidence items reduces audit effectiveness. Auditors may respond by examining a second evidence characteristic; US audit standards suggest evaluating internal control effectiveness if evidence was generated from internal (i.e. client) sources. Thus, this study explores whether internal control effectiveness reduces the impact of relying on evidence items with lower source objectivity.

Prior research has concentrated on examining the impact of a change in one evidence characteristic on audit judgment; this study expands the understanding of the evidence evaluation process by exploring how auditors evaluate multiple evidence characteristics. Furthermore, as suggested by Bonner, this research identifies an audit judgment deficiency (i.e. reliance on less persuasive internal evidence due to the demand for faster financial reporting) and examines one potential remedy (i.e. consideration of internal control effectiveness).

This study aims to examine the association between corporate diversification and accrual quality and test whether the diversification effect hypothesis, which predicts that measurement errors in accruals ultimately decline as firms become more diversified, or the measurement error hypothesis, which predicts that these errors increase, prevails.

This study modifies an existing empirical framework that uses the downward bias inherent in earnings persistence to measure accrual reliability and applies it to a sample of firms listed on the New York Stock Exchange, American Stock Exchange and NASDAQ from 1998 to 2016.

The results indicate a significantly positive association between firms’ diversification level and accrual reliability, which suggests that the diversification effect dominates the measurement errors effect, leading to an increase in firms’ accrual quality. The authors also found additional evidence suggesting that this positive association is more pronounced when a firm’s underlying operating activities among segments are less correlated, which is consistent with the fact that the diversification effect becomes more evident if a firm participates in diverse lines of business.

This study proposes that applying fewer sets of estimation methods or assumptions to a cluster of segments could yield more measurement errors in accruals. It fills a research gap by showing that the portfolio diversification effect mitigates the detrimental effect of measurement errors in consolidated financial reporting.

Brazil’s regional inequality is an important topic due to the large and persistent differences in development between states and the high levels of inequality in the country. These variations in development can potentially render survey data inaccurate since the significance of capital income varies across the states. Besides, previous studies incorporating tax and national accounts data globally have mainly focused on measuring the income distribution at the country-level. This approach can limit the understanding of inequality, especially when considering large countries such as Brazil.

The methodology used to construct these estimates follows the guidelines of the Distributional National Accounts, whose core goal is to provide income distribution measures consistent with macroeconomic aggregates and harmonized across countries and time. The procedure has three main steps: first, it corrects the survey’s underrepresentation of top incomes using tax data. Then, it accounts for national income items not included in the survey or tax data, such as imputed rents and undistributed profits. Finally, it ensures that all components match the national income.

Compared to survey-based estimations, the results reveal a new angle on the state-level inequality. This study indicates that Amazonas, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo have a more concentrated income distribution. The top 1\% of earners in these states receives around 28\% of total pre-tax income, while the top 10\% receive nearly 60\%. On the other end, Amapá (AP), Acre (AC), Rondônia (RO) and Santa Catarina (SC) are the states where the income distribution is less concentrated. There were no significant changes in the income distribution across the states during the period analyzed.

This study combines survey, tax and national accounts data to construct new estimates of Brazil’s state-level income distribution from 2006 to 2019. Previous results only considered income captured in surveys, which usually misses a significant part of capital incomes. This limitation may bias comparisons as capital income has different importance across the states. The new estimates represent the income of top groups more accurately, account for the entire national income and enable to compare regional inequality levels consistently with other countries.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the relation between tax reporting and financial reporting, their influence on transparency, and empirical implications.

Georgian architecture dominates much of the urban vista of the British Isles and is also evident in many former British colonies. A product of the eighteenth century, it is an architectural style richly embedded in its social and political context. The defining feature of a Georgian building: a perfectly proportioned, standardized and symmetrical façade echoes the balance inherent in Pacioli’s double entry treatise. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of accounting in the construction and widespread adoption of the standard Georgian house. It finds that eighteenth century builders’ price books (“estimators”), disseminating detailed materials and labour costing information on all components of house construction, inherently acted as norms or standards of cost behaviour. Essentially, it is argued, they constituted a form of human accountability which, located within a broader network of diverse actors, culminated in the diffusion of Georgian Classicism.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether auditor's unqualified opinion on internal control (ARIC) is a powerful proxy for the effectiveness of internal control in Chinese context. A rich body of research conducts their designs on an assumption that companies have more effectiveness of internal controls if they disclose ARICs. This study argues that the ARICs are not always reliable, because audit market is well characterized by excessive competition and market supervision is poorer in China compared to developed countries.

The study uses 2008 and 2009 years Chinese listed‐firms data and the Tobit regression to test the relationship between ARIC and accrual quality. The paper employs the Heckman model for self‐selection bias, which are possibly introduced by choice in disclosing ARICs.

The paper finds that firms disclose ARICs do not report lower abnormal accruals relative the non‐ARIC firms, and firms with ARICs issued by dominant auditors show more reliable accruals relative to non‐ARIC firms and firms that disclose ARICs but fail to be issued by dominant auditors. The results are robust to additional accrual quality measure, additional audit quality measure, and the correction of self‐selection bias by using the inverse Millo ratio approach.

The results suggest that implementing Chinese‐SOX could be facilitated by improving audit quality.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the effect on earnings quality of switching to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) from Turkish generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) by comparing two sets of financial statements based on Turkish GAAP and IFRS.

This study is based on mathematical modeling. The variables (total assets, net income, total accruals, cash receivables, return on assets and size) in the models are core to the quantitative research that examines the relationship between them. In this study, the total accruals are computed based on the indirect approach, and the prediction error of the model represents discretionary accruals that reflect earnings management. The data set includes financial data prepared under IFRS and Turkish GAAP. The univariate and multivariate analyses are conducted by SPSS.

The results of this study indicate that IFRS does not cause any significant differences in total assets, but the net income under IFRS is larger compared to that under the Turkish GAAP. It is also found that while there is no significant difference in total accruals, there is a difference in discretionary accruals. In other words, Turkish firms use income-reducing discretionary accruals when adopting IFRS.

This study provides more insights into the effect of IFRS on earnings quality. It also provides evidence of the effect of accounting culture on IFRS adoption. As a code-law country in Turkey, publicly traded firms have to prepare financial statements based on both Turkish GAAP, which is rule-based and restricts management decisions with strict rules, and the principle-based IFRS which leaves more room to manipulate. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that reveals the effect of accounting standards on earnings management by comparing two sets of financials of the same period prepared under different standards.