Knowledge that Transforms

The article focuses on a reply, by the author, to a comment on his paper "A Multidimensional Analysis of Selected Ethical Issues in Accounting," that was published in a previous issue of the journal "The Accounting Review." The authors of the comment focus on two. The first issue concerns the failure to include in our study the work of authors L. Kohlberg and J. Rest. The second issue involves the high reliability measures that were present in the paper. The multivariate approach is situation-specific, temporal and process-oriented, while the moral development approach is general, enduring, and trait-oriented. The defining issues test (DIT) uses scenarios unrelated to ethical problems in accounting to place individuals in one of the six stages of moral development according to the relative importance of different justifications by respondents. The expectation is that individuals who use a certain method of reasoning for the DIT scenarios will continue to use the same approach for ethical reasoning in other situations.

Reviews the book "Financial Reporting in the Nineties: Regulation and Innovation at a Crossroads," edited by Martin N. Hoogendoorn and Lilliane B. Bijl.

Reviews the book "Accounting for Liabilities," by Leonard Lorenson.

Reviews the book "Meta-Analytic Procedures for Social Research," by Robert Rosenthal.

Reviews the book "Performance Measurement, Evaluation, and Incentives," edited by William J. Bruns, Jr.

Reviews the book "International Handbook of Accounting Education and Certification," edited by Kwabena Anayane-Ntow.

Reviews the book "Cost Management in the New Manufacturing Age: Innovation in the Japanese Automotive Industry," by Yasuhiro Monden.

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 reduced individual income tax rates below that of corporations. The fear that this would lead to a systematic disincorporation has not apparently materialized since the major stock exchanges report that only about 100 partnerships were traded during the next five years. Scholes and Wolfson (1992) suggest that this result is predictable because of the additional nontax costs of operating as a partnership, which include increased transactions costs, more restricted access to capital markets, and less control over management. Guenther (1992) and Terando and Omer (1992) provide evidence that firms must have considered both tax and nontax costs when choosing organizational form. This study examines whether the factors taken into consideration in organizational form choice also affected the market value of a sample of firms in the oil and gas industry during the period 1985-1988. We chose for our tests a valuation model used by Harris and Ohlson (1987) and others since many of the publicly traded (master limited) partnerships (MLPs) were created in the oil industry. The studies by Guenther (1992) and Terando and Omer (1992) show that MLPs generally had only one line of business, less debt, and higher dividend yields than their corporate counterparts. These differences are predictable in view of the tax consequences of operating in the partnership form. Guenther also finds MLPs to be less profitable, which is consistent with higher nontax costs of the partnership form. We show that MLPs invested significantly less in exploration for new deposits. The combination of the lower exploration expenditures, higher dividend yields, and poor financial performance suggests that MLPs may have been set up as limited-life entities to distribute assets to their unit holders in a tax-efficient manner. We extend the Harris and Ohlson (1987) valuation model by adding dividends and exploration levels. Exploration levels are found significant for both MLPs and corporations, but dividends are relevant only in the MLP model. We also find that dividend levels are significantly explained by asset values only for the MLPs. These valuation differences are consistent with tax-motivated organizational form choice and the perceived passive nature of the MLPs.

Reviews the book "Surviving Your Dissertation: A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process," by Kjell Erik Rudestan and Rae R. Newton.

Reviews the book "Doing Business in Russia and the Other Former Soviet Republics: Accounting and Joint Venture Issues," by Adolf J.H. Enthoven, Jaroslav V. Sokolov and Alexander M. Petrachkov.