[Auditors are charged with the responsibility of evaluating internal control systems. Recent advances in decision support systems indicate that the speed, accuracy, and memory capacity of computers may be used to aid auditors in this task. To test this proposition, a computer-assisted method of designing, analyzing, and evaluating internal control systems, called The Internal Control Model or TICOM, was designed and implemented. The technical manual and the TICOM software are available from the authors. This paper presents the results and conclusions of that project. TICOM is a computer-based analytic tool that aids the auditor first to model the internal control system and then to query the model in order to aid the auditor in evaluating the internal control system. TICOM is based on concepts in artificial intelligence such as knowledge representation and graph simplification. It serves (1) to describe office information systems while emphasizing internal accounting controls and (2) as an aid in control evaluation. It was found that the advantages of TICOM over traditional evaluation methods are that (1) the evaluation can be more rigorous and exhaustive, (2) the documentation of the system can be more thorough because of automated completeness and consistency tests, and (3) the modeler may probe and test controls by using the query-processing portion of TICOM.]

Twenty nine universities in the U.S. offer doctoral programs that will "fit the needs of a student whose primary interest is to prepare for a career of either the teaching of accounting or research in accounting." A survey of these programs was undertaken by the Task Committee on Standards of Graduate Instruction, formed early in 1957 to succeed the Task Committee on Standards of Accounting Instruction. The article summarizes the information the committee gathered during its first year of operation. At three universities the students whose primary interest is accounting pursue their doctoral studies under the jurisdiction of the economics department. In two cases the program is jointly conducted in economics and business administration. In all other instances, the Department or School (College, Division) of Business Administration offers and administers the degree program, subject, in most instances, to general, university-wide requirements. The Committee was interested in institutional practices with respect to any student who wished to major in accounting in his doctoral program without having had the minimum course requirements for a master's degree in accounting.

The article focuses on electronic data processing in the accounting curriculum. The author mentions that growing development in the field of electronic computers and their potential use in processing business and accounting data has prompted course offering in this area. He enumerates the content that should be included in a university-level course in the area of accounting. He brings into consideration the programming of a system which includes planning, systems analysis, flow charting, coding and the other functions necessary to integrate the new system into business. He discusses the question of whether an electronic computer is necessary to teach a course or not, stating that it is necessary for elementary courses in data processing. Questions pertaining to the requisites for courses, the department which should offer system courses and the text material to be used in such courses and the availability of instructors in data processing and the training necessary for prospective instructors have been examined.

This paper analyzes the transfer pricing of multinational firms. Intrafirm prices may systematically deviate from arm’s-length prices for two motives: pricing to market and tax avoidance. Using French firm-level data on arm’s-length and intrafirm export prices, we find that the sensitivity of intrafirm prices to foreign taxes is reinforced once we control for pricing-to-market determinants. Most important, we find no evidence of tax avoidance if we disregard tax haven destinations. Tax avoidance through transfer pricing is economically sizable. The bulk of this loss is driven by the exports of 450 firms to ten tax havens.

This paper estimates the performance of insider trades on the closely held Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE) during a period of lax enforcement of insider trading regulations. Our data permit construction of a portfolio that tracks all movements of insiders in and out of the OSE firms. Using three alternative performance estimators in a time‐varying expected return setting, we document zero or negative abnormal performance by insiders. The results are robust to a variety of trade characteristics. Applying the performance measures to mutual funds on the OSE, we also document some evidence that the average mutual fund outperforms the insider portfolio.

Despite the centrality of the median voter prediction in political economy models, overwhelming empirical evidence shows that legislators regularly take positions that diverge significantly from the preferences of the median voter in their districts. However, all these empirical studies to date lack the necessary data to directly measure the preferences of the median voter. We utilize a unique data set consisting of individual‐level voting data that allows us to construct direct measures of voter preferences. We find that legislators are most constrained by the preferences of the median voter in homogeneous districts.