The paper argues that the market signifficantly overvalues firms with severely underfunded pension plans. These companies earn lower stock returns than firms with healthier pension plans for at least five years after the first emergence of the underfunding. The low returns are not explained by...

Gazelle companies are relevant because they generate much more employment than other companies and deliver high returns to their shareholders. This paper analyzes their behavior in the years of high growth and their evolution in the following years. The main factors that explain their success...

In 1990 a new Spanish 'Plan General de Contabilidad' (PGC) implemented the requirements of the EU 4th and 7th Directives in Spain. Included in the PGC is the requirement, derived from the 4th Directive, that accounts should present a 'true and fair view', in Spanish 'imagen fiel'. Where the term...

The term 'creative accounting' can be defined in a number of ways. Initially we will offer this definition: 'a process whereby accountants use their knowledge of accounting rules to manipulate the figures reported in the accounts of a business'. To investigate the ethical issues raised by...

Comparative national management accounting is the least developed aspect in the field of international accounting. Only during the second half of the 1990's some comparisons of national management accounting practice have appeared published but only at the regional level. In this paper a range...

Doubts about the reliability of a company's qualitative financial disclosure increase market participant expectations from the auditor's report. The auditing process is supposed to serve as a monitoring device that reduces management incentives to manipulate reported earnings. Empirical research...

Conventional financial accounting information is slanted in favour of certain economic interests. This paper argues in favour of accounting information capturing and showing relevant aspects of the economic-social situation, and of decision-making based on it allowing for decisions to be taken...

This study reports on the analysis of annual reports from 14- listed companies in Spain over a five-year period, from 1998 to 2002. Companies in the sample are selected on the basis of their knowledge-based assets and incentives to report on Intellectual Capital. The empirical analysis is...

In this article an empirical analyse of farming costs is performed within the frame of the activity based costing, employing a panel data set of Catalan farms. One the main conclusions of the study is that there is limited association for transaction and farm costs, especially in indirect costs....