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The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of different quantitative (traditionally used) and qualitative variables, such as the possible negative effect in determined periods of certain socio-political factors on share price formation.

We first analyse descriptively the evolution of the Ibex-35 in recent years and compare it with other international benchmark indices. Bellow, two techniques have been compared: a classic linear regression statistical model (GLM) and a method based on machine learning techniques called Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost).

XGBoost yields a very accurate market value prediction model that clearly outperforms the other, with a coefficient of determination close to 90%, calculated on validation sets.

According to our analysis, individual accounts are equally or more important than consolidated information in predicting the behaviour of share prices. This would justify Spain maintaining the obligation to present individual interim financial statements, which does not happen in other European Union countries because IAS 34 only stipulates consolidated interim financial statements.

The descriptive analysis allows us to see how the Ibex-35 has moved away from international trends, especially in periods in which some relevant socio-political events occurred, such as the independence referendum in Catalonia, the double elections of 2019 or the early handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

Compared to other variables, the XGBoost model assigns little importance to socio-political factors when it comes to share price formation; however, this model explains 89.33% of its variance.

El propósito de este artículo es estudiar la influencia de diferentes variables cuantitativas (tradicionalmente usadas) y cualitativas, como la posible influencia negativa en determinados períodos de ciertos factores sociopolíticos, sobre la formación del precio de.

Primero analizamos de forma descriptiva la evolución del Ibex-35 en los últimos años y la comparamos con la de otros índices internacionales de referencia. A continuación, se han contrastado dos técnicas: un modelo estadístico clásico de regresión lineal (GLM) y un método basado en el aprendizaje automático denominado Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost).

XGBoost nos permite obtener un modelo de predicción del valor de mercado muy preciso y claramente superior al otro, con un coeficiente de determinación cercano al 90%, calculado sobre las muestras de validación.

De acuerdo con nuestro análisis, la información contable individual es igual o más importante que la consolidada para predecir el comportamiento del precio de las acciones. Esto justificaría que España mantenga la obligación de presentar estados financieros intermedios individuales, lo que no ocurre en otros países de la Unión Europea porque la NIC 34 solo obliga a realizar estados financieros intermedios consolidados.

El análisis descriptivo permite ver cómo el Ibex-35 se ha alejado de las tendencias internacionales, especialmente en periodos en los que se produjo algún hecho sociopolítico relevante, como el referéndum de autodeterminación de Cataluña, el doble proceso electoral de 2019 o la gestión inicial de la pandemia generada por el Covid-19.

En comparación con otras variables, el modelo XGBoost asigna poca importancia a los factores sociopolíticos cuando se trata de la formación del precio de las acciones; sin embargo, este modelo explica el 89.33% de su varianza.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether audit firms use transparency reports (TRs) as a tool to standardize their brand image or whether the semantic and content analysis in these reports indicates a higher importance of country effects.

The sample includes 28 TRs published in English by the Big-4 audit firms from five EU countries (the UK, Ireland, Luxemburg, Hungary and Malta), as well as in the USA and Australia.

Using content analysis, this research finds that there is variation in the language used in TRs both across audit firms and jurisdictions. Most TRs from different countries of the same firm tend to be clustered, suggesting that audit firms use transparency reporting as a strategy to differentiate themselves from their competitors. In fact, EY and KPMG seem to have more standardized internal procedures and standardized information. Regarding country effects, the results indicate that TRs in the UK are longer and show more detailed information.

Overall, this research is innovative in the sense that it applies a new methodological approach to an emerging topic such as audit transparency reporting. It identifies emerging topics of voluntary disclosure, such as financial data of the firm, gender and ethnic origin of employees, community involvement or sanctions, among other topics of interest which might be explored in detail by future research to understand the construction of the profession.

The present study aimed to evaluate how Brazilian companies from different sectors are developing human resources practices in the context of Industry 4.0 and which of these practices allows better differentiate of companies.

After a systematic literature review to identify the most important human resources practices in the context of Industry 4.0, a survey with professionals from human resources area of companies operating in Brazil was carried out. Data analysis was performed through frequency evaluation and CRITIC method (Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation). CRITIC method was used to identify the practices that best differentiate the studied companies.

The analysed companies are in different evolutionary stages regarding how human resources management practices are adapting to the Industry 4.0 context. Few companies have presented reliable results to better support the transition process. Practices related to evaluating employee performance in this context, estimating the needs of financial resources and time for the training required by Industry 4.0 and establishing systems to recognise talents among employees who already work for the company are the practices that best differentiate companies.

There are few studies on this topic for Brazilian context. The information presented in this article can be useful for professionals and researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether the provision of non-audit services (NAS) by public accounting firms undermines audit quality. The study addresses this question by testing for an association between the provision of consulting services and auditor independence in listed companies.

The authors study if the magnitude of non-audit fees explains variations in earnings management by looking at the joint determination of non-audit fees, audit fees, and abnormal accruals using the SURE-regression estimation method.

Evidence from tested models suggests that audit services quality is uncompromised by the provision of NAS. In other words, high non-audit fees do not necessarily result in poor quality financial reporting.

A different research methodology and a different sample (e.g. non-listed companies) may lead to differing results. As the paper analyses only one country, generalizability of the results might be a limitation. There is no need to increase legal restrictions on the provision of consulting services by public accounting firms in order to better safeguard audit quality.

Consulting clients may be more confident to hire both audit and NAS with the same firm and can make a case before the general Shareholders’ meeting. By providing both audit and NAS, consulting firms obtain knowledge spillovers and synergies while appealing highly qualified professionals.

The use of simultaneous equations (SURE-regression) to establish the auditor-client relation allows us to better model theoretical relations between audit fees, non-audit fees, and abnormal accruals. Likewise, joint modeling takes account of correlations between the error terms of the individual models, yielding more efficient estimates than ordinary least squares. Performing this analysis in a non-Anglo-American country with low litigation risk is also a valuable contribution to extant literature.

This chapter addresses the political process of Venezuelan industrial relations and the consequences of this process for the worker’s movement. In the 1960s and 1970s, Venezuela was considered an emblem of political stability and consensus among the elite (Ellner, 1993, p. xvii). These were times of 90% electoral participation and growth of the labor movement. In the 1990s, however, signs of dissension among the elite and substantial growth of poverty began to appear, and the decade ended with the bloodiest popular explosion in the modern history of the country, known in Spanish as the “sacudón” or “caracazo.” This event left the country traumatized after witnessing exceptional violence toward public and private property by the poorest citizens, eventually leaving a balance of more than a thousand lives lost after the intervention of the army, called to quell the vandalism that had overflowed to civil and police forces.

Diane Davis has written a fine piece that seeks to reorient our scholarly gaze onto the dynamics of middle-class formation in the developing world. She writes, “…our research objective is not merely to study the appearance of an emergent or new middle class in the developing world, but to understand the implications of an increasingly heterogenous middle class” with more acute occupational and spatial cleavages (p. 14). Building political coalitions between the two main groupings of the middle class – public sector employees and small- and medium-sized industrial producers – which in the past had produced “socially inclusive development policy” faces new complications as the global economy could pit old middle-class corporatist populism and new middle-class neoliberalism against each other (pp. 16–17). Davis argues this intraclass cleavage is further intensified as the state in many developing world countries opts for decentralization and I would add as party politics becomes significantly less representative (see, e.g., Mainwaring, Maria Bejerano, & Pizzaro, 2006). New middle-class politics becomes less and less about “class” and more about civil society, both in organizational and discursive terms (pp. 24–25, 29–30). With political discourse shifting away from national politics per se toward local, more NIMBYist proclivities (p. 18), activism becomes more intense though dispersed, focusing on “issues of urban sustainability and livability” and through distinct modes of political engagement (p. 30). What Davis concludes therefore is that “middle class heterogeneity, as reinforced by the unequal distribution of new and old middle classes in urban built environmental, politico-institutional, and consumption spaces, manifests itself in new forms of inequality, democratic politics, and the decline of class activism” (p. 33). Future research would certainly benefit from a close inspection of urban issues as the crux of middle-class politics in the contemporary developing world.

The purpose of this paper is to address both the neglect of non-Anglo-centric accounting gendered practices beyond the predominant professional setting and the controversial roles of women and accounting in power relationships inside the household. Analyzing a Spanish upper-middle class Catholic family in the early nineteenth century, the research focuses on the reciprocal interaction of accounting with practices and processes of daily life in a rigid patriarchal socio-cultural and juridical context.

This microhistory draws upon several archives, including in Spain the Archivo Histórico Provincial de Cádiz. In England, the Bath Record Office has preserved documents and correspondence, both personal and business related, and the Worcester Record Office preserved notarial documents concerning the family. The large number of letters which have survived has facilitated an in-depth study of the people who were affected by accounting calculations.

In a juridical context where women were conceived as merely the means for the circulation of property between two families, the evidence shows that accounting provided the proof of women’s patrimony value and the means to facilitate their recovery in this cosification process. Although women had a little involvement in the household’s accounting and management, they demonstrated confidence in accounting, fulfilling a stewardship function for the resources received. Also, evidence shows that by using accounting practices to shield supposedly defenseless women, this reinforced male domination over women and promoted the view that the role of women was as an ornament and in need of a good husband.

Contrasting with the Anglo-Saxon contemporary context, the Spanish law preserved a woman’s property rights, guaranteeing recovery of properties owned by her before marriage should the marriage be legally annulled or be dissolved because one of the spouses’ death. This required a detailed accounting of the wife’s properties brought to her marriage, most especially regarding the dowry provided by her family.

This paper aims to examine the effect of technological, organizational and environmental factors on the level of innovation outcomes in manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Drawing on the technology-organization-environment theory this paper conducts a discriminant analysis of firms’ innovation level based on a data set of manufacturing SMEs.

The results show that low- and high-innovative firms can be distinguished in terms of information technology (IT) knowledge and infrastructure, commitment-based human resources (HR) selection practices, exploitative innovation and organizational capital.

The study findings support the idea that innovation is a complex phenomenon explained by multiple factors. As a consequence, firms need to devote extra efforts to develop IT knowledge and infrastructure, commitment-based HR selection practices and organizational capital because these are crucial for obtaining greater innovation outcomes. In addition, the identification of exploitative innovation as a strong discriminant variable highlights that the most effective way to be a highly innovative SME is through incremental innovation, which permits the firm to capitalize as much as possible on previous exploratory efforts.

Although many studies have highlighted that innovation is more challenging for SMEs than for their larger counterparts, the vast majority of studies has been conducted in large companies. This paper extends prior literature by analyzing the discriminant variables that may distinguish between low- and high-innovative manufacturing SMEs.