Search results for "EARNINGS"

Profit change and its drivers in the English and Welsh water industry: is output quality important?

2014

Abstract The assessment of profit change over time and its drivers is essential to analyse firms' financial performance. This paper investigates profit change and its components for the 10 English and Welsh water and sewerage water companies over the period 1991–2008 and for three regulatory sub-periods. Profit changes and their drivers are computed following two approaches, namely: without controlling for water and sewerage quality issues, and after decomposing the output effect into high quality and low quality output effect. In both cases, profit change is decomposed into various factors such as quantity and price effect, technical change, efficiency change, resource mix, product mix, an…

Contributions and limitations of self assessment of competences by higher education graduates

2009

This work presents a continuum of competence. On one extreme of which there is a subtlety of concept of competence. On the other, there are rigorous econometric analyses to find the answer to a critical question: ―to what extent is the assessment of competence reliable? ‖ Quest into the etymology helped us providing a rationale in favour of the preferred use of competence over competency. Moreover, we come to trace its roots in French literature where it was in use long before its emergence in English literature. We found that competences were common among various geopolitical locations and inferred that interest in competence has been internationalised realistically. Both English and Frenc…

La capitalización de los arrendamientos operativos: Análisis del impacto en las empresas del IBEX 35

2018

Purpose: This paper analyzes the consequences of the change in the accounting rules about operating leases in the companies and users of financial information. Design/methodology: We use the constructive capitalization method to estimate the liabilities and leased assets and perform an ex ante analysis of the regulatory impact in the IBEX 35 non-financial companies. Non-parametric tests are employed to examine the effect on certain ratios, and through a multivariate regression we investigate the business characteristics that explain the variation of EBITDA. Findings: The ratios under study are significantly affected by the capitalization of operating leases. The explanatory analysis shows t…

El efecto del anuncio de beneficios cuando cotizan opciones: un estudio conjunto del mercado de contado y el mercado de opciones

2015

ResumenEl objetivo del trabajo es comprobar, para los mercados de valores españoles, si el comportamiento de los precios incorporando la información revelada por el anuncio de beneficios trimestrales, es más eficiente en aquellas empresas en las cuales se negocian opciones sobre sus acciones. Utilizando la tradicional metodología del suceso y la comparación de funciones de distribución, obtenemos que para las empresas con opciones, la información se incorpora antes. Además, verificamos que hay un comportamiento anormal en el mercado de opciones que viene explicado por la información que contiene el beneficio. Los resultados obtenidos soportan la mejora de la eficiencia del mercado de contad…

2019

Abstract This paper examines the labor-market returns to a new form of postsecondary vocational education: vocational master's degrees. We use individual fixed effects models on a matched sample of students and non-students from Finland to capture any time-invariant differences across individuals. We find that attendance in vocational master's programs leads to an earnings increase of more than seven percent five years after entry. The estimated effect remains positive even if selection on unobservables is twice as strong as selection on observables. Earnings gains are similar by gender and age, but they are marginally higher for those in the health sector than for those in the business or …

The labour market consequences of self-employment spells:European evidence

2008

Hundreds of thousands of Europeans enter self-employment each year, but because self-employment spells are typically brief, many of them exit soon after entry. We examine how those who return to paid-employment fare on the labour market using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). Like earlier evidence for the US, ours indicate that, in general, brief spells of self-employment do not increase average hourly earnings upon return to paid-employment. For highly educated men, an additional year of self-employment actually decreases their earnings by 4-5% relative to a year of continued wage employment. We also find that brief spells of self-employment are associated with increased proba…

The Return-to-Entrepreneurship Puzzle

2013

The returns to entrepreneurship are monetary and non-monetary. We offer new evidence on these returns using a large sample of genetically identical male twins. Our within-twin analysis suggests that OLS estimates are downwards, and traditional first-differenced panel data estimates upwards biased. We find no differences in the earnings of men with either low or high education. Our within-twin analysis of non-monetary returns shows that entrepreneurs with low education work longer hours and have greater responsibilities, but also face a reduced risk of divorce and less monotonous work tasks. The same does not apply to highly educated entrepreneurs.

Comprehensive school reform and labor market outcomes over the lifecycle: Evidence from Finland

2021

This study focused on the labor market effects of the Finnish comprehensive school reform in 1972–1977 over the lifecycle. The reform increased the age at which students are separated into vocational and general tracks from 11 to 16 as well as updated the curriculum to include more general content instead of vocational. Using longitudinal administrative register data and exploiting the gradual implementation of the reform, I found a negative effect on employment in early career and a positive effect later in the lifecycle. Results for labor earnings are more nuanced and sensitive to different model specifications, but a positive effect was found in the late career. After the reform, the tre…

External investigations and disciplinary sanctions against auditors: the impact on audit quality

2015

In this paper, we provide empirical evidence for the impact of disciplinary sanctions imposed on Spanish auditing firms and their engagement partners. The disciplinary sanctions resulted from external investigations, which revealed misapplications of auditing standards. In particular, we evaluate (a) the efficacy of the external supervisory board in identifying low-quality auditors and (b) the effectiveness of the disciplinary system in improving the quality of subsequent statutory audits performed by the sanctioned auditors. We employ two earnings management indicators as proxies for audit quality: loss avoidance through extraordinary items and abnormal accruals. And we compare these measu…

Technical secondary education in Togo and Cameroon : Research Note

1990

International audience; This paper presents an evaluation of technical secondary education in Togo and Cameroon from the labor market perspective using tracer study data. Individuals face great difficulties in finding a job following training and the most common strategy used to avoid unemployment is to secure work in the informal sector. However, informal sector jobs provide low earnings and there appears to be a large discrepancy between an individual's expected earnings and actual earnings. One solution is to stimulate, and to enhance the role of, informal training through apprentice training centers.