Three alternative, but not mutually exclusive, perspectives on accounting method choice are contrasted: the opportunistic behavior, efficient contracting, and information perspectives. Much of the empirical work on accounting method choice is based on the opportunistic behavior perspective. The Malmquist and Main and Smith papers are attempts to view accounting method choice as a means of improving the monitoring capabilities of contracts which rely on accounting numbers. The papers serve as useful vehicles for illustrating the difficulties of delineating a set of maintained assumptions that result in hypotheses about how accounting method choice affects the monitoring characteristics of contracts, and distinguishing between hypotheses based on the three perspectives on accounting method choice.

This paper argues that audit firms achieve competitive advantages through specialization, and that clients purchase audit services from the least cost supplier. Client-auditor realignments thus represent efficient responses to changes in client operations and activities over time. Results obtained from analyzing the financial characteristics and share price performance of corporations that changed auditors between 1973 and 1982 support the view that realignments can generally be attributed to cross-temporal changes in client characteristics and differences in audit firm cost structures.

This article reports nonparametric estimates of the effect of labor-supply behavior on the payments to families enrolled in the Seattle/Denver Income Maintenance Experiment. The randomized assignment of families to the treatment groups in this experiment was designed to permit the calculation of these nonparametric estimates. However, the nonparametric estimates have never been reported, even though they are easy to construct using a simple weighting procedure. Unfortunately, responses to the data collection instrument (which depended on costly surveys) were not random, and this opens up some ambiguity in the results.

We provide a positive analysis of a firm's decision to report the operations of a financial subsidiary on a consolidated versus an unconsolidated basis. Our evidence indicates that the firm is more likely to choose consolidated reporting the greater the operating, financial, and informational interdependencies between parent and subsidiary. Moreover, our evidence offers no support for the FASB hypothesis that firms use unconsolidated financial subsidíaries to understate the fixed claims on their balance sheets.

Examination of 41 closed-end fund intial public offerings (IPOs) during the period from January 1986 to June 1987 reveals that the mean intial day's return is not significantly different from zero in contrast to previous findings for nonfund IPOs. New funds also show significant negative after- market returns unlike other new issues. Despite the disparity between our findings and previous results, our results are consistent with existing models. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.

Auditing, Auditor change, Public sector, Audit quality

The nature and characteristics of economic fluctuations in Eastern European Centrally Planned Economies are analyzed. When cycles are identified by the deviation from a fitted deterministic trend, they are seen to coincide temporally. This common variation is found for Net Material Product (NMP) and Investment. The implications of the common variation of CPE cycles are discussed. Possible explanations of this phenomenon are discussed with emphasis on a possible link via trade. We then examine the possibility that the time series contain unit roots. We are unable to reject this hypothesis for the variables in question. This suggests using procedures for detrending nonstationary time series suggested by Beveridge and Nelson. Such an analysis is performed and the implications are discussed. We find that there remains some common variation in the cyclical component of output, but to a lesser extent. The implications of these findings for future research on CPE cycles are discussed.

A presidential vote function and a presidential approval ratings function are jointly estimated for U.S. post-war observations. The estimation technique treats the two equations as seemingly unrelated regressions with unequal numbers of observations. Cross-equation restrictions implying that voters and poll respondents use identical standards in judging the economic performance of incumbents are imposed and tested. Estimates show that both votes and approval ratings are influenced by GNP growth and inflation. The results suggest that poll respondents are more inflation averse than voters; however, tests of this hypothesis are not conclusive.