Search results

This paper assessed accuracy level in accounting for government funds in Nigeria's federal treasury and their faithful presentation in government financial reporting. It aimed to determine whether the reported annual balances in Nigeria's financial reporting were reliable or otherwise. Data used in analysis were obtained from secondary sources from federal treasury.

Ex-post “facto” analysis method was adopted in the study involving the use of statistical techniques of absolute or aggregate mean percentage error derived from differences between recomputed and published fund balances and was employed. This was augmented with interactive review meetings of the initial case research report with the management of Nigeria's audit agency.

Results distilled from the consolidated revenue fund (CRF), development fund and public debt show that recomputed values were greater than the fund balances in the gazetted financial statements. Results for contingency fund (CTF), federation account fund (FAF), special trust fund (STF) and sundry deposit fund yield equal figures and accurate. The paper concludes that there were serial understatements of the core public fund balances in the financial statements over the years. This trend of reporting incorrect in three core public funds in financial statements rendered Nigeria's financial position unreliable in the affected years for decisions. It also facilitated frauds, mismanagement of funds and corrupt practices.

The scope of the research is restricted to assessment of degree of accuracy in fund accounting, faithful representation of the respective fund balance in the liabilities side of FGN balance sheet and the reliability of the financial position. But, it did not consider or cover the implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) in federal treasury since FGN had not issued any full IPSAS–oriented financial statements as on 2015.

Identification of deficiencies in fund account balances, structural defects in fund accounting and acts of understatement of carrying balances in CRF and capital development fund (CDF) implies that the aggregate core fund liabilities reported in financial statement of government entities without corresponding assets do not actually reflect a true and fair financial position in some countries. It reveals remarkable degree of financial information asymmetry in government financial reporting. Illusionary fund accounting has direct linkage to poor fiscal governance in many sovereign with associated sub-optimal delivery of public goods and service level distress syndrome in many economies; lead to poverty, unemployment, crisis and macroeconomic disturbances.

The study contributes to the development of fund accounting system; strengthening government financial reporting architecture and practices. It provides framework for tracking financial information asymmetry in government financial reporting and mismanagement of public funds. It provides platform to effect necessary adjustment (correction) during the “first time 3-year adoption” adjustment window in Nigeria. Flowing from the findings, it advocates for institutionalization of government fund accounting standards and provides evidence for migration to accrual accounting system in countries that have not already implemented it. Evaluation system developed herein will improve fund management in federal treasury and contribute to efficient public financial management, good governance and enhance development of public accounting practice.

This exploratory empirical research is the one to ever evaluate accuracy level of fund accounting in sovereign entities and faithful representation in government's financial position prior to implementation of accrual accounting and financial reporting. The study established substantial level of illusionary accounting for public funds and information asymmetry in published government's financial reporting. It is necessary to rectify these discrepancies in fund accounting and financial reporting prior to and or during the first three years of the IPSAS transition implementation programme. These research deliverables provide adopters with relevant data for adjustment accounting during the transition period in strengthening public financial reporting in order to realize the benefit of full IPSAS accrual accounting.

This paper examines the role of state-imposed fund balance limitation on school district budgetary behavior in New York State between 1997 and 2004. The findings suggest that imperfect state limitations may lead to imperfect results. Compliance among New York state school districts with the two percent limit in the examined period is low. While the constraint does not limit unreserved unappropriated fund balances to two percent, it does influence the way districts form estimates of revenues and expenditures. Recent changes in the limitation (to four percent) do not fully address the flaws of the original rule (lax enforcement, applied on the budgeted level, and generous rules on reserves), thus no significant change in budget behavior is expected.

Long lease real estate funds (over £15bn in Q3 2020) have emerged as an increasingly important part of UK pension fund real estate portfolios. This paper explores the reasons for their dramatic growth, their characteristics and performance.

This study uses data for the period 2004–2020 collected directly from fund managers and from AREF/MSCI and empirical analysis to explore their characteristics and performance.

Pension fund de-risking and regulatory guidance have supported the dramatic growth of long lease real estate funds. Long lease real estate funds have delivered strong risk-adjusted returns relative to both balanced property funds (with shorter lease terms) and the wider property market. This relative performance has been particularly strong when wider property market performance has been weak. Long lease funds have objectives aligned with liability matching and their performance suggests they are lower risk (more bond-like) investments. In addition, our analysis highlights they are far less responsive to the wider property market than balanced funds. However, they are not significantly different from balanced property funds in terms of their short-term relationship with gilt yield movements.

For pension funds and other investors the paper highlights that long lease real estate funds offer a different exposure than balanced property funds. Long lease funds have objectives more closely aligned to the overall objectives for pension fund investment but are not significantly more reliable than balanced property funds in the short-term as a liability hedge. For real estate fund managers, occupiers, developers and others active in the real estate market, the paper highlights why these funds have been (and are likely to remain) attractive to investors leading to substantial demand for long lease real estate investments.

This is the first study to review this increasingly important part of the UK real estate fund universe.

This paper aims to examine the performance and benchmark asset allocation policy of 70 KiwiSaver funds catergorised as growth, balanced or conservative over the period October 2007-June 2016. The study focuses on the sources for returns variability across time and returns variation among funds.

Each fund is benchmarked against a portfolio of eight indices representing eight invested asset classes. Three measures were used to examine the after-fee benchmark-adjusted performance of each fund: excess return, cumulative abnormal return and holding period returns difference. Tracking error and active share were used to capture manager’s benchmark deviation.

On average, funds underperform their respective benchmarks, with the mean quarterly excess return (after management fees) of −0.15 per cent (growth), −0.63 per cent (balanced) and −0.83 per cent (conservative). Benchmark returns variability, on average, explains 43-78 per cent of fund’s across-time returns variability, and this is primarily driven by fund’s exposures to global capital markets. Differences in benchmark policies, on average, account for 18.8-39.3 per cent of among-fund returns variation, while differences in fees and security selection may explain the rest. About 61 per cent of balanced and 47 per cent of Growth funds’ managers make selection bets against their benchmarks. There is no consistent evidence that more actively managed funds deliver higher after-fee risk-adjusted performance. Superior performance is often due to randomness.

This study makes use of a unique data set gathered directly from KiwiSaver managers and captures the long-term strategic asset allocation target which underlines the investment management process in reality. The study represents the first attempt to examine the impact of benchmark asset allocation policy on KiwiSaver fund’s returns variability across time and returns variation among funds.

This research examines the relative influences of different forms of government on local governments' financial management. Specifically, it seeks to determine whether or not the impact of financial and environmental factors on the unreserved fund balance differs between an administrative form of government, such as the Unit system, and a political form of government, such as the Beat system of county governments in Mississippi. The purpose of this study is to explain further why governments maintain far more savings than are the recommended benchmarks. The findings suggest that savings behave differently under different financial environments. During times of resource abundance, Beat systems increase savings as per capita income, property tax, and other revenues increase. Beat systems decrease savings as the population, debt per capita, and intergovernmental revenues increase. Unit systems, however, increase savings as property tax, intergovernmental and other revenues increase, but decrease savings as per capita income, population, and debt per capita increase. During times of resource scarcity, majority-non-white counties spent savings at a much slower rate than did the majority-white counties.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the structures of the relationships between actors in the creative industries sector using crowd-funding, and how co-creation is the basis for reaching balanced centricity in the creative industries.

The Many-to-Many Marketing Theory, Service-Dominant Logic and Service Logic are the theoretical bases for explaining how the changing roles of the actors in the creative industries sector have given the crowd a great capacity for deciding in the value-creation process. A qualitative, case-based approach is used, given the complexity of the phenomenon to be analysed.

The findings of the empirical approach have important theoretical and practical implications. On the theoretical side, it analyses the importance of balanced centricity instead of customer centricity as the basis for system stability. Findings also have implications for service managers, as this can be considered an alternative for certain business projects, especially in the creative industries sector, where a growing demand is identified, not only as a method of financing, but also as a strategy for strengthening the bond with customers.

The study has implications for practitioners and scholars. With respect to managers, the “balanced centricity in cultural crowd-funding” model constitutes a significant contribution, because it replaces the prominent position which until now has been enjoyed by the consumer, with the overall balance of the system, in other words, with aiming to benefit all agents. This translates into a change in how strategies are understood and applied in organisations, as in every decision organisations will have to keep in mind the implications that their decisions and actions have on the rest of the agents, with the objective of managing to exploit their “strategic potential”. Strategic planning actions are identified.

This paper is the first to analyse balanced centricity as the basis for system stability in the creative industries. The new tasks of the customer as a selector and financer of projects increase the roles assigned to the co-creation concept and improve the knowledge of Network Theory for the creative industries.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the performance of UK property funds using the dual sources of active management, Active Share and tracking error, to distinguish between the types of active management styles used by funds.

The authors use data on 38 UK real estate funds and classify them into five active management categories using the dual sources of active management, Active Share and tracking error. Then, the authors compare their return performance against Active Share, tracking error, fund size and leverage. Therefore the paper is able to answer two of the fundamental questions of investment: does active management add value and what form of active management, stock selection or factor risk, is better at adding value to the fund?

There are three main conclusions. First, the approach of Cremers and Petajisto (2009) and Petajisto (2010) is able to classify real estate funds in the UK on their management activity into categories that makes intuitive sense and seem stable over time. Second, balanced funds show relatively low Active Shares and particularly low tracking errors, due to the benefits of property-type diversification. In contrast, specialists funds display higher Active Shares and both low and high tracking errors depending on their stock-picking approach; diversified or concentrated. Third, an analysis over different time periods confirmed that funds in the sample essentially remained in the same categories within the sample period, even during markedly different market return periods. This implies that investors need to constantly monitor changes in the market and switch between fund management styles, if at all possible.

The analysis was only based on 38 funds with complete data over the sample period and the relationship between fees and active management was not examined, even though ultimately investors are concerned with returns after management fee. It would be instructive therefore if the number of funds and time period was expanded to see if the results are robust and to see whether management fees outweigh the benefits of active manager.

The findings should enable investors to make a more informed investment decisions in the future.

To the best of the author’s knowledge this is the first paper to apply the dual sources of active management, Active Share and tracking error, in the UK real estate market.

This paper analyzes the impact of economic downturns on the revenue and expense sides of city financing for the period 2003 to 2009 using a convenience sample of the audited end of year financial reports for thirty midsized US cities. The analysis focuses on whether and how quickly and how extensively revenue and spending directions from past years are altered by recessions. A seven year series of Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) data serves to explore whether citiesʼ revenues and spending, especially the traditional property tax and core functions such as public safety and infrastructure withstood the brief 2001 and the persistent 2007 recessions? The findings point to consumption (spending) over stability (revenue minus expense) for the recession of 2007, particularly in 2008 and 2009.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of selected macroeconomic variables in influencing the movement of net asset value (NAV) of the Islamic unit trust funds (UTFs) in Malaysia. In efforts to arrive at more enriching findings, the UTFs are further categorised into equity, bond, balanced, fixed, mixed, money market and feeder funds.

The study adopts the vector autoregression framework (Johansen and Juselius (1990), cointegration test and vector error correction model to analyse the relationship between the macroeconomic variables and the NAVs of the various type of funds.

The study shows that there is a significant long-run equilibrium relationship between the macroeconomic variables and the NAV of all Islamic UTFs in Malaysia. Despite of this, the findings show that different funds have different responses to the movements of the macroeconomic variables.

The results of the study are of significant importance to the various stakeholders in the Islamic UTF industry. Investors benefit in terms of getting the inputs on their investment decisions as to whether to buy, hold or sell fund units within their investment portfolio in the long run, along with building their optimal portfolio diversification investment strategy, especially in reallocating their assets distribution between the various types of funds in the UTFs industry. For the policy-makers, the findings of the study may assist them in evaluating the suitability of the existing economic policies as to whether they positively or negatively contribute to the development of the Islamic UTFs.

This paper fulfils the need to understand how unit-holders can strategise and diversify their portfolio investments in the Malaysian Islamic UTFs industry based on detailed understanding and knowledge derived from rational and scientific inputs.

To achieve long‐term performance, superannuation balanced funds typically invest in a range of defined asset classes based on a strategic asset allocation approach. In an Australian context, the purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of the balanced investment option against eight different investment strategies and how the property allocation changes with different asset allocation models.

The analysis is based on ex post data covering 17 years (1995 to 2011). The selected passive and active allocation models are set within the modern portfolio theory framework utilising Australian ten year bonds as the risk free rate. The Sharpe ratio is used as the key risk‐adjusted return performance measure.

Property provided the second highest risk adjusted return profile behind the alternative asset class. The different asset allocation models perform as well as the conventional strategic approach and in many instances property allocation is found to be under‐allocated on a return optimisation basis. Depending on the asset allocation model, property when included within a multi‐asset portfolio improves the portfolio risk‐adjusted return profile by 2 per cent to 28 per cent.

For an Australian superannuation balanced fund, the empirical results show that there is scope to increase the property allocation level from current 10 per cent to 23 per cent. This knowledge will be beneficial for funds currently re‐profiling investment portfolios to achieve stable risk‐adjusted returns.

The research contributes to both practical and academic fields, as it offers a methodological approach on how allocation to property assets can be improved using a series of passive and active asset allocation strategies.