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This study aims to provide the main contents of the revision of the 2023 OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and suggest implications for the Korean government and multinational enterprises.

Following the brief history of the revision of OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, this study reviews and evaluates major substantive and procedural revisions of the 2023 OECD Guidelines, and then suggests countermeasures for Korean government and businesses.

The most significant substantive change of the 2023 revision is that expectations for environmental due diligence and disclosure obligations, including climate change and biodiversity, for multinational enterprises have been expanded and strengthened. Regarding procedural changes, the biggest change is the introduction of a basis rule for the National Contact Points for Responsible Business Conduct (NCPs for RBC) to judge each issue and a rule that the final statement must include follow-up details and deadlines, which is expected to strengthen the effectiveness of the NCP dispute resolution mechanism.

This study is the first academic paper to introduce major substantive and procedural revisions to the 2023 OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises in Korea. This study also provides implications for the Korean government and companies following the 2023 revised OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises as follows. First, the Korean government must establish a public–private partnership to closely communicate to prevent Korean companies from being harmed by failing to meet strengthening international Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) standards. In addition, Korean government should actively participate in ESG-related international forums, including the OECD, and strive to reflect the needs and interests of Korean companies. Second, the Korean NCP should strengthen its activities to prevent potential damage by expanding education and promotions for Korean businesses on related overseas legislative trends and NCP dispute case studies so that Korean companies can effectively deal with the strengthened ESG standards. Third, Korean multinational enterprises should preemptively establish an advanced ESG management system to seize new opportunities in the global supply chain previously concentrated in China and India in the process of reorganizing global supply chains according to the trend of strengthening ESG standards and the US value alliance strategy.

Weak-form rationality of fixed-event forecasts implies that forecast revisions should not be correlated. However, significant positive correlations between consecutive forecast revisions were found in most USDA forecasts for U.S. corn, soybeans, wheat, and cotton. This study developed a statistical procedure for correction of this inefficiency which takes into account the issue of outliers, the impact of forecast size and direction, and the stability of revision inefficiency. Findings suggest that the adjustment procedure has the highest potential for improving accuracy in corn, wheat, and cotton production forecasts.

Although accounting professors around the globe have addressed various social aspects of accounting, very rarely does that research address the concerns of students. This is despite the fact that students are the focus of the educational mission of most universities. In an effort to address this gap, this chapter extends the field of social accounting to an issue critical to students: the cost of accounting textbooks in the United States. Textbook cost is drawing increasing attention from public interest groups and government regulators as costs are growing at a more rapid rate than many other costs, and constitute a significant portion of the total cost of obtaining a higher education degree. For accounting students, these costs are exacerbated by the fact that accounting textbooks are among the most expensive of any major, and they are being revised with increasing frequency – which eliminates students’ ability to buy less expensive used books – often with little or no discernible benefit to students. We argue that in some subfields of accounting – especially managerial/cost and introductory courses – topics are relatively stable, and that frequent textbook revisions are unnecessarily costly for our students, many of whom, along with their families, are making significant financial sacrifices to earn their degrees. In this study, we provide background on the textbook pricing issue, include data from a survey of accounting faculty demonstrating that they consider the revisions too frequent, document the increasing frequency of accounting textbook revisions over recent decades, analyze content in a leading accounting textbook, and discuss options for reducing the cost of accounting textbooks, including following student activists’ lead in advocating for open-source, free textbooks.

The empirical properties of benchmark revisions to key US macroeconomic aggregates are examined. News versus noise impact of revisions is interpreted via the cointegration property of successive benchmark revisions. Cointegration breaks down in the last two years before a benchmark revision. Hence, we conclude that there is some information content in benchmark revisions. This last point is illustrated by reporting that inflation forecasts could be improved by the addition of a time series that reflects benchmark revisions to real GDP. Standard backward- and forward-looking Phillips curves are used to explore the statistical significance of benchmark revisions.

In this study, I investigate analysts’ ability to process public information for investors by examining price reactions to a sample of analysts’ recommendation revisions issued shortly after quarterly earnings announcements. I find that these recommendation revisions are used by investors to reassess the valuation implications of announced earnings. Confirmatory (contradictory) recommendation revisions that have the same (opposite) sign as prior earnings surprises can cause investors to revise their beliefs about the valuation implications of announced earnings upward (downward) and thus cause price reactions that are positively (negatively) associated with prior earnings surprises. In addition, I find that as the information complexity of earnings announcements gets higher, these recommendation revisions play a more important role in helping investors understand the valuation implications of announced earnings. Finally, I find that analysts’ ability to interpret the valuation implications of announced earnings for investors has remained at a similar level since the adoption of Regulation Fair Disclosure. Overall, this study provides additional evidence on how analysts help improve corporate information environment.

To investigate sixth-grade students with learning disabilities and their use of Google Docs to facilitate peer revision for informational writing.

A qualitative case study is used to examine how students used Google Docs to support peer revision. Constant comparative analysis with a separate deductive revision and overall writing quality analysis was used.

The findings indicate that students used key features in Google Docs to foster collaboration during revision, they made improvements in overall writing quality, their revisions focused on adding informational elements to support organization of their writing and revisions were mostly made at the sentence level, and students were engaged while using the technology.

We postulate that the use of peer revision coupled with Google Docs technology can be a powerful tool for improving student writing quality and for changing the role of the writing teacher during revision. The use of peer revision should be accompanied with strong explicit instruction using the gradual release of responsibility model so that peer tutors are well-trained. Writing teachers can use Google Docs to monitor and assess writing and peer collaboration and then use this knowledge to guide whole and small-group instruction or individual conferences.

The evaluation of competing hypotheses is an essential aspect of the audit process. The method of evaluation and re-evaluation may have implications for both efficiency and effectiveness. This paper presents the results of a field experiment using a case study set in the context of a fraud investigation in which practicing auditors were required to engage in multiple hypothesis probability estimation and revision regarding the perpetrator of the fraud. The experiment examined the effect of two different methods of facilitating multiple hypothesis probability estimation and revision consistent with the completeness and complementarity norms of probability theory as it applies to the independence versus dependence of competing hypotheses and with the prescriptions of Bayes' Theorem. The first method was to have participants use linear probability elicitation scales and receive prior tutoring in probability theory emphasizing the axioms of completeness and complementarity. The second method was to provide a graphical decision aid, without prior tutoring, to aid the participants in expressing their responses. A third condition in which participants used linear probability elicitation scales but received no tutoring in probability theory, provided a benchmark against which to assess the effects of the two treatments.

Participants receiving prior tutoring in probability theory and using linear probability elicitation scales complied in their estimations and revisions with the probability axioms of completeness and complementarity. However, they engaged in frequent violations of the normative probability model and of Bayes' Theorem. They did not distribute changes in the probability of the target hypothesis to the nontarget hypotheses, and they engaged in “eliminations and resuscitations” whereby they eliminated a suspect by assigning a zero probability to that suspect at an intermediate iteration and resuscitated that suspect by reassigning him or her a positive probability at a later iteration. The participants using the graphical decision aids, by construction, did not violate the probability axioms of completeness and complementarity. However, with no imposed constraints, the patterns of their revisions were different. When they revised the probability of the target hypothesis, they revised the probabilities of the nontarget hypotheses. They did not engage in eliminations and resuscitations. These patterns are more consistent with the norms of probability theory and with Bayes' Theorem. Possible explanations of this phenomenon are proposed and discussed, including implications for audit practice and future research.

The belief-adjustment model has been an integral part of accounting research in belief revision, especially in the examination of order effects. Hogarth and Einhorn ((1992) Cognitive Psychology, 24, 1–55) created the belief-adjustment model to serve as a theoretical framework for studying individuals’ decision-making processes. The model examines several aspects of decision-making, such as encoding, response mode, and task factors. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive examination of the accounting studies that have used the theoretical framework of the belief-adjustment model in auditing, tax, and financial accounting contexts. Roberts’ ((1998) Journal of the American Taxation Association, 20, 78–121) model of tax accountants’ decision-making is used as a guideline to organize the research into categories. By using Roberts’ categorization, we can better sort out the mixed results of some prior studies and also expand the review to include a more comprehensive look at the model and its application to accounting. While many variables have been examined with respect to their effect on accounting professionals’ belief revisions, most studies examine them in isolation and do not consider the interaction effects that these variables may have. Our framework also identifies areas of the belief-adjustment model that need further research.

Land rents are sometimes set at a fixed percentage of land value called the ground rental rate, with the land value periodically revised. Intuitively the frequency of revision should affect the appropriate rental rate. This paper derives the relationship between the rental rate and the frequency of revision. Depending upon discount rales and the expected growth rale in land value, the relationship may be positive or negative. In addition the revision frequency governs the extent to which inflation driven increases in interest rates induce changes in the rental rate. The latter changes range from virtually nothing to changes in tandem with interest rates.

The extant literature on initial public offerings (IPOs) generally assumes that a high degree of pre‐IPO leverage serves as a positive signal of firm quality as it forces a firm's managers to adhere to tough budget constraints. The purpose of this paper is to question the validity of this assumption when it is indiscriminately applied to all firms, while other potentially important determinants of a firm's optimal capital structure are ignored. High‐tech versus low‐tech firms are specifically focused on.

Multivariate regression controlling is used for various firm and offer characteristics, market and industry returns, and potential endogeneity between investment bank rankings, price revisions, and under‐pricing.

It is found that debt only serves as a signal of better firm quality for low‐tech IPOs, as reflected in smaller price revisions and lower under‐pricing. For high‐tech IPOs, the effect of leverage is reversed: for these firms, higher leverage is associated with increased risk and uncertainty as reflected by higher price revisions and greater under‐pricing. The results remain significant after controlling for various firm variables as mentioned above.

The research results allow managers of high‐tech firms that contemplate going public to better understand the effect their company's capital structure will have on the pricing of their IPO. Prior research generally suggests that – irrespective of a firm's underlying characteristics – higher financial leverage results in lower under‐pricing. The findings highlight the falsity of this generalization and point out that it only holds for low‐tech firms. Firms that operate in a high‐tech sector, on the other hand, will leave less money on the table if they use equity rather than debt financing.

It is shown that leverage only serves as a positive signal for low‐tech firms. The IPOs of these firms generally undergo smaller price revisions and are less under‐priced than the IPOs of low‐tech firms that use little debt in their capital structure. While this result is consistent with earlier studies, it is show that the relationship between these variables reverses for high‐tech IPOs. Specifically, it is found that high‐tech IPOs with high leverage undergo larger price revisions and are more under‐priced than high‐tech firms with low leverage. In contrast to earlier findings, this suggests that for high‐tech IPOs, higher leverage implies increased ex‐ante uncertainty and risks.