Search results for "independence"
showing 10 items of 292 documents
Nonaudit services provided by incumbent auditors and earnings management: Evidence of auditor independence from an EU country
2011
ABSTRACTThis paper examines whether the joint provision of audit and non-audit services undermines auditor independence by testing for an association between the provision of consulting services and auditor independence measured by discretionary accruals. For the most part, previous literature has studied the issue in countries with an Anglo-American business environment. This study analyzes the possible impairment of auditor independence in the context of a continental European Union country (Spain). A cross-sectional regression is estimated to test the relationship between non-audit fees and reporting quality. Based on publicly available information for Spanish listed companies, the evide…
Audit quality and the going-concern decision-making process: Spanish evidence
2004
In this study, we attempt empirically to investigate the relationship between audit quality and the probability that a financially distressed company would receive a going-concern opinion. Auditor decision-making in the presence of going-concern uncertainties may be characterized as a two-stage process. The first stage is the identification of a potential going-concern problem and the second stage is to determine whether the particular company should receive a qualified going-concern opinion. A sample of 1,199 non-financial Spanish company-years has been obtained from the database issued by the Stock Exchange National Commission for the fiscal years ending between December 1991 and December…
Can Auditors Be Independent? – Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Client Type
2012
Recent regulatory initiatives stress that an independent oversight board, rather than the management board, should be the client of the auditor. In an experiment, we test whether the type of client affects auditors’ independence. Unique features of the German institutional setting enable us to realistically vary the type of auditors’ client as our treatment variable: we portray the client either as the management preferring aggressive accounting or the oversight board preferring conservative accounting. We measure auditors’ perceived client retention incentives and accountability pressure in a post-experiment questionnaire to capture potential threats to independence. We find that the type …
Determinants of Board Structure in Microfinance Institutions: Evidence from East Africa
2013
This study investigates the association between the unique characteristics of microfinance institutions and board structure. The agency and resource dependence theories provided theoretical guidance for this study. Using a panel dataset of 63 microfinance institutions in East Africa, we found that the presence of regulations and international influence is associated with larger boards, while the presence of founders is associated with small boards and less board independence. There is a higher level of board gender diversity in microfinance institutions managed by founders. There is greater diversity of nationalities in microfinance institutions that are internationally influenced. The imp…
Decentralization and growth: what if the cross-jurisdiction approach had met a dead end?
2013
International audience; The relationship between decentralization and economic growth is generally studied from a perspective stressing universal or quasi-universal regularities across jurisdictions. That approach has generated many insights but seems to reach its limits. The paper explains why it allows contrasting positions with regard to the benefits of decentralization even among proponents of free and competitive markets. And it seems from the empirical literature that no robust and economically significant cross-jurisdiction relation between decentralization and economic performance or growth, except perhaps their independence, has been found. The absence of a relation valid across ju…
Beyond the audit expectations gap
1992
In seeking to encourage a broader, European dimension to research on auditing and audit expectations, this paper examines the recent history of auditing and its regulation in Spain within the context of international developments in the accounting profession. The more expansive role being assigned to the audit function in Spain following the implementation of the Fourth and Eighth European Company Law Directives is generally viewed by Spanish writers as a progressive step, with largely positive effects. Such views stand in some contrast to the history of auditing in Britain, where the prevalence of an ‘audit expectations gap’ suggests a rather more problematic state of affairs. In exploring…
Time Use of the Self-Employed
2007
SUMMARY It is a well-documented empirical regularity that it is more satisfying to be self-employed than to work as an employee for an organization. A large part of this difference in job satisfaction is attributed in the literature to the strong perception of independence by the self-employed. In this paper we study people's time use as a source of entrepreneurial independence. By making use of disaggregated sequential microdata on people's time use, we are able to document that the self-employed work longer effective hours, as well as more in the evenings and weekends, than those employed by an organization. Even though being able to decide when to do one's work may be a sign of flexibili…
Foro de educación
2016
Resumen basado en el de la publicación Monográfico con el título, Enseñanza superior en Europa : objetivos contemporáneos para instituciones históricas Se describe el desarrollo de las universidades en Letonia desde la década de 1950 hasta la actualidad. Lo más alto del sistema educativo experimentó cambios junto con las transformaciones políticas del país. Letonia paso a ser parte de la Unión Soviética en 1940 y recuperó su independencia en 1991, pasando a unirse a la UE en 2004. Desde 2012 Letonia es una participante incipiente del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior. Se describen las transformaciones de las universidades en Letonia desde la perspectiva de una teoría del aprendizaje cul…
Quantitative prediction of gas-phase F19 nuclear magnetic shielding constants
2008
Benchmark calculations of (19)F nuclear magnetic shielding constants are presented for a set of 28 molecules. Near-quantitative accuracy (ca. 2 ppm deviation from experiment) is achieved if (1) electron correlation is adequately treated by employing the coupled-cluster singles and doubles (CCSD) model augmented by a perturbative correction for triple excitations [CCSD(T)], (2) large (uncontracted) basis sets are used, (3) gauge-including atomic orbitals are used to ensure gauge-origin independence, (4) calculations are performed at accurate equilibrium geometries [obtained from CCSD(T)/cc-pVTZ calculations correlating all electrons], and (5) vibrational averaging and temperature corrections…
The Impact of Corporate Board Characteristics on Firm Value: A Literature Survey
2018
This chapter provides a review of theoretical and empirical studies that analyze the effects of board characteristics on firm performance. It serves the purpose of demonstrating different approaches to studying corporate board characteristics as well as the importance of examining these characteristics, namely, board size, board independence, board leadership, gender diversity, board busyness and staggered boards.