Most companies prefer to use absorption costing rule rather than marginal cost pricing. This article is aimed at defining the absorption costing rule as deriving from a principal-agent formulation of two tier organizations : (i) the upstream unit fixes the production capacity and uses it as a...

In firms subject to tariff regulations, the authorities have developed “regulatory” accounting methods, to identify accepted costs and possible supernormal lrates of return. These methods are also useful in industries free from price regulation, because information about the economic rate of...

This paper examines the effect of accruals subjectivity on the way investors use the information contained in accruals to set the interest rates charged in debt contracts. To measure the degree of subjectivity involved in the estimation of accruals we use several indicators of their ex ante...

We test whether corporate governance mechanisms promoted by best practice codes are effective in constraining earnings manipulation in Spain, as previously documented in the US and the UK. We show that to a certain extent an Anglo-Saxon model of corporate governance may turn out to be a failure...

This study investigates the market valuation of income smoothing by a long run analysis of the relation income smoothing vs. return and risk in the Spanish stock market. Using several methodological approaches to estimate and test abnormal returns, the results suggest some pattern of behaviour...

The poor stock price performance of firms that raise capital through seasoned equity offerings is one of the recent puzzles in financial literature. In this study we investigate whether pre-issue earnings management can explain these results for rights issues in Spain. Consistent with this...

The transition towards a free-market economy and democratic society in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries encompasses complex processes of socio-economic transformation from the centrally-planned economy and communist regime. The reforms of the accounting systems in the CEE...

This paper presents an equity valuation model that employs risk-neutral valuation under stochastic interest rates along the lines of Ohlson and Feltham (1999). Closed form valuation formulae for equities are presented in a discrete time setting whereby the short term interest rate is modelled by...

Accounting standard setters are considering the wider use of fair value accounting. This paper focuses on the financial stability implications of a move in the banking sector from the current accounting framework to full fair value accounting. A simulation exercise is performed on how various...

Modern management accounting information systems trace cost to a greater level of detail than did their predecessors. Nonetheless, the basic ingredient of accounting information continues to be the measurable transaction, actual or budgeted, rather than the more subjective concepts of marginal...