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This case examines critical ethical accounting practice issues surrounding a request for proposal for audit services at Aviary Corporation based on a real Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement action. Audit and tax partners at Western Accounting Firm, a large international public accounting firm, used confidential information obtained from the company’s Chief Audit Officer to modify their proposal for audit services. In response to their actions, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined the auditing firm, the partners, and the Chief Audit Executive. The authors used publicly available information and adopted fictitious names to develop a teaching case that instructors can implement in a variety of accounting and ethics classes to increase students’ understanding of professional codes of conduct and independence guidance.

Research on underbanked and unbanked populations has tended to focus on rural borrowers. Lenders to this disadvantaged population are often seen as loan sharks preying on the disadvantaged or as corporate capitalists using micro loans to financialize the developing world. Building on the concept that money has social meaning and that it both creates and maintains significant local relationships, we explore the lending practices of a small gray-market financier in urban Bangkok. While most anthropology research is borrower-focused, we detail the processes and cultural understandings of making loans, collections, trust, and personal relationships of a lender in a Bangkok neighborhood. From her perspective, lending is perceived as a community service that no other institution provides to the under/unbanked in her neighborhood. Marking a divergence from prior development research, which emphasizes the high interest rates of informal lenders, the difficulties faced by borrowers in rural areas, the gendered relationships and hierarchies developed and sustained via lending, this article highlights the lending-side practices of informal loans and the limited ability to move from the liminal space of the gray-market lending business.

It has been already established that the countries that have opened their economies in advance have reaped more benefits compared to those who have done it late. For example, the countries of the West are far away from the countries of the East in terms of the per capita incomes as because, besides others, the magnitudes of trade openness of the former are higher compared to that of the latter. Besides countries, there are some economic groups such as European Union, Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), etc. who have proved the similar growth impacts of trade. There is another group of highly developing economies, with the acronym of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which has proved as being highly beneficiaries of the trade liberalisation. But the magnitudes of trade openness and their impacts in these countries are subject to further explorations using modern data. The present chapter aims to compute trade openness using two different methods for the BRICS countries and make association of it with growth and foreign currency reserves (FCRs) for the period 1991–2019. In addition, the study examines whether the FCR is sustainable. It observes positive and negative correlations between economic openness and gross domestic product (GDP) growth and FCR in the member nations leading to mean that trade openness has definitely contributed to the growth as well as accumulation of FCRs. But, the trends in the FCRs are unsustainable in the BRICS nations.

This study aims to investigate the association between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and tax avoidance, as well as the effect of earnings performance on this link. We suggest a negative association between CSR and tax avoidance based on the Stakeholder Theory. We also suggest that earnings performance moderates this relationship. Based on a sample of 25 Tunisian firms during the years 2012–2017, data were gathered via annual reports of the companies, and a survey-questionnaire was used to gather CSR information. The research design uses ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to investigate the association between CSR and tax. In addition, the analysis is performed using panel data to account for heterogeneity at the individual level and over time. Using this research design, the study provides a comprehensive examination of the effect of CSR on tax avoidance among Tunisian companies over a 6-year period. According to our findings, companies that participate in CSR initiatives show less tax avoidance than those that do not. Moreover, in line with the Slack Resource Theory, for businesses with higher earnings, the negative link between CSR and tax avoidance is stronger. Our research demonstrates that businesses may utilize CSR to improve their standing in the community and lower the likelihood of tax avoidance. These results suggest that profitable firms may have more funds available to spend on CSR initiatives and, as a result, are more motivated to maintain a positive reputation by refraining from tax avoidance strategies.

Peer support in the substance use arena has a long and interesting history. Many of the ideas for substance use treatment can be traced back to the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and its mutual aid/self-help programme. However, as interest in providing care and support progressed, and research began to develop, other equally helpful methods of providing peer supports emerged. In this chapter, we discuss this emergence of peer support, and describe how and where this support is provided. The processes and relationships involved in peer support work and the operationalising of lived experience are outlined.