Abstract Increasing activities of the various Federal agencies in examining, investigating, and regulating commerce and industry have no doubt taken away from the accounting profession some of the work formerly performed by public accountants. The profession as a whole has not suffered from the loss of such engagements, but on the contrary, has immeasurably benefited in other ways from these increasing activities by the Federal government. Private industry and individuals are seeking more and more the expert assistance of skilled accountants in interpreting and following the laws, rules, and regulations of the various governmental agencies affecting accounting principles and practices. Many practicing accountants are now called upon to testify before governmental agencies on behalf of their clients, and consider such work as professional routine. It is likely that Federal agencies have taken the responsibility of examining and investigating many cases of an accounting nature, which were formerly under the control, and supervision of accountants engaged in private practice, or was not examined at all.

Abstract Comments on a study which used the decision style model of cognitive complexity to test whether complex integrative decision styles prefer more complex information input and use more information in decision making than cognitively low decision styles. Inconsistencies in the interpretations of results; Flaws in the empirical equivalents used.

Economists have often found it useful to look at the average length of an unemployment spell in evaluating labor market conditions and in considering the labor market experience of the unemployed. Usually this statistic has to be estimated from grouped observations on interrupted (incomplete) unemployment spells. This paper is a comparative study of some nonparametric and parametric methods of estimating this quantity using Australian Department of Social Security data on unemployment benefit recipients.

We argue that inertial behavior on the part of investors can have significant consequences for corporate financial policy. One implication of investor inertia is that it improves the terms for the acquiring firm in a stock-for-stock merger, because acquirer shares are placed in the hands of investors, who, independent of their beliefs, do not resell these shares on the open market. In the presence of a downward-sloping demand curve, this leads to a reduction in price pressure and, hence, to cheaper equity financing. We develop a simple model to illustrate this idea and present supporting empirical evidence.

We use a simple model to outline the conditions under which corporate investment is sensitive to nonfundamental movements in stock prices. The key prediction is that stock prices have a stronger impact on the investment of “equity-dependent” firms—firms that need external equity to finance marginal investments. Using an index of equity dependence based on the work of Kaplan and Zingales, we find support for this hypothesis. In particular, firms that rank in the top quintile of the KZ index have investment that is almost three times as sensitive to stock prices as firms in the bottom quintile.