Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Why did management and auditors fail to identify ineffective internal controls in their initial SOX 404 reviews

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the rationale for the failure of management and auditors to identify material internal control weaknesses (ICWs) in their initial Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) 404 reviews, resulting in subsequent restatement of their opinions. Design/methodology/approach - The paper focuses on the factors associated with the failure of management and auditor to identify material internal controls weaknesses in their initial SOX 404 reports. Logistic regression is run on a sample of 56 firms that reported material internal controls weaknesses in their amended internal control reports and a control group of 344 firms that reported material internal controls weaknesses (i.e. ineffective internal controls) in their initial internal control reports for 2004. Findings - The results show that firm size, the use of a Big 4 auditor, the ratio of non-audit to total fees, and the need for accounting restatements are positively associated with the probability to file an amended internal control report. The number of ICWs and the number of audit committee meetings are negatively associated with the probability to file an amended internal control report. Practical implications - The paper's findings suggest that regulators and corporate boards should consider providing more guidelines on audit committee practices in addition to the audit committee structure. For example, more guidance by the board is needed to ensure that the audit committee is active in overseeing the company's auditor–client relationship and its internal audit function. Originality/value - Empirical findings on factors associated with the failure of management and auditor to identify material ICWs in their SOX 404 review can contribute to an understanding of factors affecting the efficiency of the SOX 404 review by attributing such failure to either inherent factors such as operational complexity and industry membership or to managerial choices in auditor-client relationship and corporate governance issues. An understanding of these factors can help companies and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and the Securities and Exchange Commission in their efforts to improve the effectiveness and the efficiency of the current SOX 404 process.
Persistence in U.S. State Unemployment Rates

Romero-A´ vila and Usabiaga (2007) find that many U.S. state unemployment rates are stationary, a result at odds with the traditional view that unemployment rates are pathdependent and subject to shocks that have permanent effects. They base their results on multivariate unit root tests that provide for two breaks in mean. This note extends the analysis to directly examine whether the series were fractionally integrated. When no allowance is made for breaking means, the results suggest evidence in favor of hysteresis, an outcome that generally applies when one break in mean is considered. Allowing for two breaks demonstrates that the evidence in favor of the natural rate and the hysteresis hypotheses is temporally sensitive.
Logistic Regression Analysis of Cruise Vacation Market Potential: Demographic and Trip Attribute Perception Factors

This article describes the demographic and trip attribute factors of potential cruise passengers based on a nationwide sample of persons who previously requested travel information for tourist destinations in South Texas from regional convention and visitors bureaus. The analysis used logistic regression modeling. The key factors in determining the propensity to choose a cruise vacation are marital status, income, previous cruise vacation experience, cost, the duration of the cruise, visiting new destinations, and the availability of a precruise or postcruise package. Factors that were not found to be statistically significant included the typical number of pleasure trips per year, the itinerary, direct air flights to the departure city, accessibility from the airport to the ship, gender, age, educational attainment, and number of children in the household.
Effective Factors on Alignment of Accounting Information Systems in Manufacturing Companies: Evidence from Iran

This study examines accounting information systems (AIS) alignment and its effective factors in the context of manufacturing companies in industries of food and beverage, sugar, materials and pharmaceutical companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE), in Iran. Strategic alignment is very important in increasing company's performance, however, few studies have been made to investigate the factors that affect alignment and therefore, in this study we aimed to identify different levels of AIS alignment of Iranian companies and then investigated the factors that affect in this alignment. We defined AIS alignment as adoption between AIS requirements and AIS capacity. Using a questionnaire, data from 81 companies (include their financial and executive managers) were gathered on nineteen accounting information specifications for both requirements and capacity of AIS. We applied moderation view for fitness between these two items. Then cluster analysis was applied to categorize companies in two groups of aligned and unaligned. The study then investigated some factors that might be related to AIS alignment. Findings indicate that AIS alignment was related to level of manager's accounting and IT knowledge; usage of accounting and audit firms as external experts of AIS; and usage of internal IT staff. The company size is also related to AIS alignment. It is important for companies to consider these effective factors on their AIS alignment so that opportunities can be recognized to improve AIS alignment that support their information needs in competitive environment.
Is Reversal of Large Stock-Price Declines Caused by Overreaction or Information Asymmetry: Evidence from Stock and Option Markets

The role of option markets is reexamined in the reversal process of stock prices following stock price declines of 10% or more. A matched pair of optionable and nonoptionable firms is randomly selected when their price declines by 10% or more on the same date. The authors examine the 1,443 and 1,018 matched pairs of New York Stock Exchange/American Stock Exchange (AMEX) and National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations firms over the period from 1996 to 2004. It was found that the positive rebounds for nonoptionable firms are caused by an abnormal increase in bid–ask spread on and before the large price decline date. On the other hand, the bid–ask spreads for optionable firms decrease on and before the large price decline date. An abnormal increase in the open interest and volume in the option market on and before the large price decline date was also found. Overall, the results suggest that the stock‐price reversal neither is a result of overreaction nor can it be simply explained by the bid–ask bounce. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 29:348–376, 2009
Are Asian Sovereign Wealth Funds Different?

Sovereign wealth funds have become a prominent feature of the international financial landscape. However, legitimate concerns have been raised about these funds. Many of those concerns can be addressed via increased accountability and transparency by the funds. The Santiago Principles are a good start in doing so. My sovereign wealth funds scoreboard points to areas where these Principles can be improved. At the same time, the OECD effort to address concerns from the host‐country side has not resulted in the erection of new barriers to that form of cross‐border investment, but the OECD failed to reverse the creeping financial protectionism of the past decade. Because of their size and the source of their funding, some Asian funds stand out. As a result, those funds will be held to a higher standard of accountability and transparency.
Effectiveness of Capital Controls and Sterilizations in China

Since 2003, China has been facing a trilemma of determining how to maintain independent monetary policy and limit exchange rate flexibility simultaneously, while facing persistent and substantial international capital flows. The present paper is an empirical evaluation of the effectiveness of China's sterilizations and capital mobility regulations, measured by sterilization and offset coefficients, respectively, using monthly data between mid-1999 and March 2009. We find that the effectiveness of China's sterilizations is almost perfect in terms of the monetary base, but not in terms of M2, and that China's capital controls still work but are not quite effective. Recursive estimation reveals that increasing mobility of capital flows and decreasing effectiveness of sterilizations might undercut China's ability to maintain monetary autonomy and domestic currency stability simultaneously. To solve the trilemma smoothly, China's monetary authority should continue to relax the management of the exchange rate, and take further steps towards deregulation of capital outflows.
The Price of Improvements: Agrarian Contracts and Agrarian Development in Nineteenth-Century Eastern Spain

Fixed-rent contracts do not free landlords from the need to supervise the land if it is of high value and fragile fertility, nor do they free them from the costs of monitoring farmers if they are poor peasants prone to fall into arrears. In such cases, however, compensation for improvements will encourage tenants to farm with care and act as a bond against non-payment of rent. This article studies the repercussions of these kinds of situations by analysing what happened in nineteenth-century Valencia, where being the owners of the improvements led to tenants eventually becoming the owners of the land.
Real estate management: past, present, and future research directions

This article aims at discussing how the literature about the real estate management has been evolving over time. To date, both scholars and practitioners substantially converge in maintaining that, if properly performed, that bundle of operations known as corporate real estate management (CREM) can positively affect the overall corporate profitability. Nonetheless, this assumption seems to need more empirical evidence if it wants to be consolidated. Furthermore, although CREM is still the most addressed area of inquiry, over the last years, the attention to related topics, such as the managing of construction projects, has been increasing also. We believe that, in the future, the attention to these topics will increase proportionally to the growing relevance of environmental and social sustainability issues.
Extremal analysis of currency crises in Taiwan

We employ extreme value theory to identify currency crises in Taiwan. The new approach is able to identify severe currency crises, and at the same time avoid the crisis-misclassification problem of Markov-switching models. Signal accounting indicates that currency crises in Taiwan are preceded by rapid expansion of domestic credit and other monetary aggregates, implying that financial excesses stressed by the third-generation crisis model are the main causes of these currency crises.
Exploring the Antecedents of Staff Turnover Within the Fast-Food Industry: The Case of Hamilton, New Zealand

The purpose of this study is to investigate, within four multinational fast-food chains, the relationships between job satisfaction and job turnover in Hamilton, New Zealand. The study seeks to reveal the antecedents of intention to leave the current job among workers. The partial least squares path modeling (SmartPLS 2.0) is used to specify a theoretical model for analyses to identify the antecedents of satisfaction/dissatisfaction. A survey approach was undertaken to accumulate responses. Data analysis indicates that workers are not satisfied with their jobs, and this leads to increased intentions to leave. The results of the model estimation reveal that Training and Recognition, Job Security, and Loyalty are positively related with job satisfaction. The outcomes of the study support the conclusion that in order to reduce staff turnover, fast-food industry management should develop strategies with emphasis on training, recognition of the employees, creating a feeling of job security, and trying to develop loyalty amongst its employees.
An Empirical Study of Servqual's Dimensionality

This paper describes a scale, called SERVQUAL, which measures Service Quality. First, the scale's conceptual framework and the steps of its development are described. Second, criticisms arising from several replication studies of SERVQUAL are reviewed. The last part focuses on the dimensionality of the scale. Do the 22 items of the SERVQUAL scale clearly evoke, in the clients’ mind, the five Service Quality dimensions defined by Parasuraman et al. [1988]? An empirical study shows that one dimension, ‘Tangibles’, is clearly perceived followed by ‘Empathy’. The three other dimensions, ‘Reliability’, ‘Insurance’ and ‘Responsiveness ', are confused in the client's mind.
A Simple Measure of Price Adjustment Coefficients

One measure of market efficiency is the speed with which prices adjust to new information. The author develops a simple approach to estimating these price adjustment coefficients by using the information in return processes. This approach is used to estimate t he price adjustment coefficients for firms listed on the NYSE and the A MEX as well as for over-the-counter stocks. The author finds evidence of a lagged adjustment to new information in shorter return intervals for firms in all market value classes and some support for the propositi on that prices adjust much more slowly and with more noise for smaller firms. Copyright 1993 by American Finance Association.
LMI Characterisation of Robust Stability for Time-Delay Systems: Singular Perturbation Approach

We study here robust stability of linear systems with several uncertain incommensurate delays, more precisely delay-dependent stability. The main result of this paper consists in establishing that this property is equivalent to the feasibility of some linear matrix inequality (LMI), a convex optimization problem. The method is based on two main ideas: use of Fade approximation to transform the system into some singularly perturbed finite-dimensional system, for which robust dichotomy has to be checked; and recursive applications of generalized Kalman-Yakubovich-Popov (KYP) lemma to characterize by an LMI the previous property
European Financial Market Dependence: An Industry Analysis

This paper uses a copula model to investigate the degree and determinants of European market dependence across 10 industries in 12 Euro zone and 8 non-Euro zone stock markets during the period 1992–2011. Most of the industries in Euro countries show a dependence increase with the Euro-area after the introduction of the Euro. The effects are strongest in countries with larger market capitalization and in the Financials, Industrials, Consumer Goods, Utilities, Technology and Telecommunications industries. Overall, the export intensity, interest rate sensitivity and competitiveness of an industry and the financial development and economic openness of a country are the most important determinants of changes in equity market dependence. The period around the Lehman collapse also shows higher equity market dependence between European countries, while the lower dependence increase during the period of the recent European sovereign debt crisis suggests that country-specific factors may matter more than before.
Light and Electron Microscopic Studies of the Harderian Gland in Bilgorajska Goose (Anser anser)

The Harderian gland (HG) in birds is the dominant orbital gland, which plays an important role in immu-nological response. Tissue sections taken from adult females of Bilgorajska goose were stained with hematoxylin-eosin, Azan, PAS, AB pH 2.5, AF and HDI. Based on the histological structure the HG in Bilgorajska geese had compound tubular structure with multiple lobules and two types of epithelial cells lining the tubules. Epithelial cells in the central part of the lobes were dark in color and contained serous fluid, while in the deeper layers, epithelial cells were lightly coloured and contained mucous fuid. Histochemical studies showed the presence of neutral mucopolysaccharides and carboxylated acid muco-polysaccharides in the secretory cells. The small number of single plasma cells were present in HDI staining below the basement membrane of the secondary and primary ducts, near the crypts of the main duct. TEM study demonstrated that plasma cells had a large nucleus with condensed heterochromatin and were rich in rough endoplasmic reticulum. The knowledge of gland’s structure, and above all an analysis of the immune system components may affect clinical practice and properly conducted immunization of birds.
The Effect of Public Education Expenditure on Shadow Economy: A Cross-Country Analysis

Abstract This paper empirically examines whether devoting more resources to education can reduce the size of the shadow economy on a cross-section of countries. The findings show a negative relationship between public education expenditure and the size of the shadow economy, which is robust to the inclusion of different proxies for the control variables, a large set of policy variables, regional differences and endogeneity. The findings also emphasize the role of education, suggesting that public policies devoted to higher education level imply a decreasing effect on the shadow economy.
Design and implementation of 16 × 16 multiplier using Vedic mathematics

This paper briefly describes the Urdhva-Tiryagbhyam Sutra of vedic mathematics and we have designed multiplier based on the sutra. Vedic Mathematics is the ancient system of mathematics which has a unique technique of calculations based on 16 Sutras which are discovered by Sri Bharti Krishna Tirthaji. In this era of digitalization, it is required to increase the speed of the digital circuits while reducing the on chip area and memory consumption. In various applications of digital signal processing, multiplication is one of the key component. Vedic technique eliminates the unwanted multiplication steps thus reducing the propagation delay in processor and hence reducing the hardware complexity in terms of area and memory requirement. We implement the basic building block: 16 × 16 Vedic multiplier based on Urdhva-Tiryagbhyam Sutra. This Vedic multiplier is coded in VHDL and synthesized and simulated by using Xilinx ISE 10.1. Further the design of array multiplier in VHDL is compared with proposed multiplier in terms of speed and memory.
Randomized Intra-patient Controlled Trial of Mepilex Lite Dressings versus Aqueous Cream in Managing Radiation-Induced Skin Reactions

Objective: Severe acute radiation-induced skin reactions occur in a significant proportion of women who receive radiation therapy for breast cancer. We previously showed that Mepilex Lite dressings decreased the severity of erythema. Here we report their effect on the full range of skin reactions in 74 breast cancer patients post-mastectomy. Methods: A total of 80 women were recruited from four hospitals in New Zealand with 74 women contributing a full data set for analysis. The first skin area on the chest wall to develop erythema was randomly divided into two similar halves; one half was treated with Mepilex Lite dressings, the other half with aqueous cream. Skin reactions were assessed using the Radiation-Induced Skin Reaction Assessment Scale. Results: Compared with aqueous cream, Mepilex Lite dressings did not significantly reduce the incidence of moist desquamation but did reduce the overall severity of skin reactions by 41% (p<0.001), the average moist desquamation score by 49% (p=0.043) and the sum of the moist desquamation time for all patches by 28% from 25 to 18 weeks. Most patients preferred the dressings, found them easy to use and very comfortable to wear. Conclusions: Mepilex Lite dressings reduce all aspects of radiation-induced skin reactions.
Competitive advantage and firm performance: evidence from small and medium enterprises

This study aims to examine the relationship between competitive advantage and firm performance in the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The dominant theories in strategic management views competitive advantage as firm performance but the opposition claims that it is a firms' capability to acquiring superior performance. The latter claims that competitive advantage could lead to firm performance but many other factors might alter the relationship. Previous studies have examined the impact of competitive advantage on firm performance but not on SMEs. The analysis on the 365 set of usable data collected from the SME owner-managers using questionnaire survey shows that differentiation has positive impact on firm performance but with relatively lower impact compared to previous studies. Lower cost is found to have negative effect on customer retention but the effect is not significant. Based on the findings of the study, SMEs are advised to construct their competitive advantage around differentiation.
A Critical Reflection of Service Learning: A Higher Education Perspective

This article draws on the reflections of the pedagogical practice of service learning in higher education. Mahlomaholo (2010) described crisply the “context of educational dysfunctionality suffusing the country”. The question often pondered about is: what skill and knowledge can be infused to make teaching at higher education institutions, to reflect the realities of society. Using critical reflection we asked: “[i]s your teaching worthy? ”). The business management methods module allows for the pedagogical practice of service learning to be incorporated into the assessment. By adopting a constructivist approach to teaching business management method content means that the business management instructor is building on students’ previous knowledge and allows the students to draw from their own experiences, thereby providing a scaffold for the students to develop an increased understanding of the business management pedagogical issues being discussed. As a business management method instructor choosing a pedagogical approach, that can address categories of significant learning, is an important step in developing learning that is durable. There are many views about how constructivist approaches to learning can or should, be aligned to constructivist approaches to teaching. The two pedagogical practices that can be effectively incorporated in business management education are: cooperative learning and service-learning. This paper uses auto ethnography to focus on the instructor’s subjective experience of using service learning as a pedagogical approach. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014. v5n20p1331
DIAGNOSTICS FOR REGRESSION MODELING IN SPATIAL ECONOMETRICS

This paper describes statistics for model criticism in spatial econometrics. The purpose of these statistics is to evaluate how well a chosen model fits the data and to identify influential cases and how they affect the aggregate picture. The paper reviews results in Martin (1992) for the regression model with correlated errors where the coefficients of the variance matrix are assumed either known or fixed. The problems of applying the statistics in spatial econometric modeling are discussed. An application is reported which considers diagnostics for the mean function and highlights cases that might influence estimates of the parameter of the error model. Different ways of assessing the influence of cases are also described.