We examine firm managers' incentives to commit fraud in a model where firms seek funding from investors and investors can monitor firms at a cost in order to get more precise information about firm prospects. We show that fraud incentives are highest when business conditions are good, but not...

This paper argues that the tradtitional way of gauging a country's fiscal policy stance by looking at government budget deficit or cyclically adjusted budget deficits is misleading in the case of China, since a lot of what usually would be considered fiscal policy is conducted via investment by...

This abstract will be reformatted upon submission. You don't need to format for line-breaks here!!!!! This paper tests the contributions of the size of state-owned enterprises as a determinant of China’s economic growth. The methodology is discussed in papers by Levine and Renelt (1992) and...

Public sector occupies a prominent position in the Indian economy. The present government policy is to divest its holding in PSUs, without privatizing profit making PSUs. It has also decided to provide full autonomy to the board of directors of those enterprises. This provides an interesting...

Spain is the only large European country in which airport management is strictly centralized and publicly owned. This peculiar institutional setting prevents competition among Spanish airports, and policy makers and bureaucrats in charge of the system regularly justify it on grounds of...

This paper examines alternative ways to prevent losses from bank insolvencies. It is widely viewed that transparency in reporting bank balance sheets is a key element in reducing such losses. It is, however, unclear just how such transparency would be achieved. Current approaches to avoiding...

This paper presents some stylised facts about the book-tax gap, i.e. the difference between book and taxable income, of Italian corporations. This divergence is a reflection of the usage of any tax shields and any applicable credits and rebates which, in turn, implies that the concept of taxable...

This paper examines industrial differences in depreciation rates and the suitability of financial data for a microeconomic analysis. Depreciation is a main source of enterprise investment and serves as a source for replacement of obsolete or used-up capital. The findings on capital structure in...

A search of the accounting, trade and ethics literature failed to find a single article that discussed the role that accountants play in assisting in the data gathering process of a trade investigation. Yet there are serious ethical issues that need to be addressed. Certain aspects of trade...

Agency costs are a cost of production, and firms that do a better job of minimizing these costs should exhibit better performance. This paper tests this hypothesis by calculating the performance elasticity of average employee hourly compensation for U.S. manufacturing firms. This elasticity...