In a recent paper in this Journal, Gaumnitz et al. [1982] provided evidence on the consensus of auditors' judgments which seemed to reconcile conflicting results reported in Ashton [1974] and Joyce [1976]. In their study Gaumnitz et al. [1982] combined judgment tasks of evaluating internal control and recommending the number of audit hours needed to assess the propriety and collectibility of accounts receivable. They reported mean correlations of 0.704 and 0.617 for internal control and audit planning judgments, respectively. The former was consistent with Ashton [1974] and the latter was higher than observed by Joyce [1976], who reported a mean correlation of only .373 for audit hour of an accounts receivable subsystem. Gaumnitz et al. suggested that by linking the two judgment tasks they reinforced the link between internal control and planned number of audit hours. Specifically, they stated: link is provided by the auditor's knowledge that an inverse relationship should exist between the strength of internal control and the number of audit hours planned. Thus, the requirement to provide an explicit judgment on the strength of internal control enabled our subjects to operationalize this inverse relationship, resulting in a high correlation (relative to Joyce's findings) among audit hour estimates [1982, pp. 753]. This explanation appears plausible given the results of previous audit judgment research. That is, high levels of consensus have been found for

Capital Budgeting, Investments, Opportunity costs, Decision making

Asset valuation, Price-level adjusted accounting, Uncertainty, Estimation theory

Allocation problem, Estimation, Brief-Owen model

Again the distinction is drawn, but is it really so clear? Consider, for example, the standard cost system in a manufacturing firm. This system supplies information which is useful for some decision-making purposes. But, underlying each standard input cost is an implied decision about the kind and amount of resource to be used and the nature of the market in which it is to be purchased. Behind each input/output relationship is an implied decision regarding the technical conditions under which the process should operate and the rate at which employees should work. In order to obtain solutions to one set of problems-those for which the output of a

Allocation, Uncertainty, Future cash flow, Estimation

C. Edward Arrington, William Hillison, Robert E. Jensen, An Application of Analytical Hierarchy Process to Model Expert Judgments on Analytical Review Procedures, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring, 1984), pp. 298-312

Robert L. Hagerman, Mark E. Zmijewski, Pravin Shah, The Association between the Magnitude of Quarterly Earnings Forecast Errors and Risk-Adjusted Stock Returns, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 526-540

Holmes' comment was addressed to Dr. Watson who had just expressed astonishment that Holmes was ignorant of the Copernican theory of the solar system. In truth, Holmes' reply to Watson expressed my exact sentiments after reading Ronen's review. Why? Because I found that I would have to answer the following question in the negative after almost every point he made: Would I do anything differently in view of what Ronen has stated?

This paper examines when information asymmetry among investors affects the cost of capital in excess of standard risk factors. When equity markets are perfectly competitive, information asymmetry has no separate effect on the cost of capital. When markets are imperfect, information asymmetry can have a separate effect on firms’ cost of capital. Consistent with our prediction, we find that information asymmetry has a positive relation with firms’ cost of capital in excess of standard risk factors when markets are imperfect and no relation when markets approximate perfect competition. Overall, our results show that the degree of market competition is an important conditioning variable to consider when examining the relation between information asymmetry and cost of capital.