The subprime crisis led to a wave of government interventions in the private sector that has been particularly strong in Europe and Latin America, where several governments are large shareholders in a variety of public firms. In a sense, the subprime crisis induced these governments to behave as...

We study a test statistic based on the integrated squared difference between a kernel estimator of the copula density and a kernel smoothed estimator of the parametric copula density. We show for fixed smoothing parameters that the test is consistent and that the asymptotic properties are driven...

There is a widespread public perception that the provision of NAS undermines auditor independence. In order to protect auditor independence, the regulatory frameworks of many countries include regulations and guidelines which auditors are required to observe. This paper provides a comparative...

This paper explores the questions of why corporate accountability arises and how it is discharged. It explains the relationship between corporate governance and accountability and the role of the audit function in securing corporate accountability. It also provides insights into changes...

This paper expands our understanding of the introduction of new audit arrangements in the public sector by looking at three cases relating to the audit of local government. The first case saw the Audit Office replacing the elected auditors as the sole auditor of municipalities in 1886; the second...

This paper examines the impact of SOX on the total cost and the component cost of going public. First, we document a statistically significant increase in non-underwriting expenses of 0.8 percentage points after the introduction of SOX, which is mostly due to an increase in accounting and legal...

We study item-pricing laws (which require that each item in a store be individually marked with a price sticker) and examine and quantify their costs and benefits. On the cost side, we argue that item-pricing laws increase the retailers’ costs, forcing them to raise prices. We test this...

This paper studies the properties of the sieve bootstrap for a class of linear processes which exhibit strong dependence. The sieve bootstrap scheme is based on residual resampling from autoregressive approximations the order of which increases slowly with the sample size. The first-order...

This paper examines the rise of the VAR approach from a historical perspective. It shows that the VAR approach arises as a systematic solution to the issue of 'model choice' bypassed by Cowles Commission (CC) researchers, and that the approach essentially inherits and enhances the CC legacy...

Measurement forms the substance of econometrics. This chapter outlines the history of econometrics from a measurement perspective - how have measurement errors been dealt with and how, from a methodological standpoint, did econometrics evolve so as to represent theory more adequately in relation...