An Empirical Investigation of the Audit Expectation Gap in Pakistan

The basic purpose of this research is to find evidence on existence of audit expectation in Pakistan. Methodology and instrument used in this study was derived from similar investigation by Grambling and Schatzberg (1996) and a few necessary modifications are incorporated as per the rules and regulations governed and imposed by Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan (ICAP). These questionnaires were distributed to three types of respondents’ auditors, accountants and accounting educators. The results of this study provided the evidence that audit expectation gap exists among these three groups of respondents. The Implications and future research guidelines are also discussed accordingly. Keywords: Audit, Audit expectation gap, auditors, accountants

Income Inequality and Its Measures: Evidence from OECD and European Countries

This paper is by nature an exploration study aimed to examine the measures of income inequality and is integrated with an empirical investigation of possible factors affecting the level of inequality. Recent data shows that the gap between poor and rich has been widening on an international scale. The way to solve this “sharing of created economic value” problem begins with the problem of how to measure inequality. Our literature review revealed different ways of measurement and how the concept of inequality was approached as well as it determines possible candidates for factors in empirical analysis. By making reference to De Maio’s findings (2007), most widely used methods of measurement are mentioned. A description of current situation in developed and developing economies based on most popular measure, which is Gini coefficient, is also provided.  Our empirical setting, to define factors influencing Gini coefficient, is employing data for 32 developed and developing OECD and EU countries in 2011 and 2012. We estimated an OLS model to the relation between Gini coefficients and several pre-identified regressors. We have found a linear relation with average income tax rate (taxrate) and with labor force participation rate (laborrate). The fact that public policies in taxation and labor force participation should be altered to cope with inequality is stressed in the paper

Enhancing Physical Layer Security in AF Relay Assisted Multi-Carrier Wireless Transmission

In this paper, we study the physical layer security (PLS) problem in the dual hop orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based wireless communication system. First, we consider a single user single relay system and study a joint power optimization problem at the source and relay subject to individual power constraint at the two nodes. The aim is to maximize the end to end secrecy rate with optimal power allocation over different sub-carriers. Later, we consider a more general multi-user multi-relay scenario. Under high SNR approximation for end to end secrecy rate, an optimization problem is formulated to jointly optimize power allocation at the BS, the relay selection, sub-carrier assignment to users and the power loading at each of the relaying node. The target is to maximize the overall security of the system subject to independent power budget limits at each transmitting node and the OFDMA based exclusive sub-carrier allocation constraints. A joint optimization solution is obtained through duality theory. Dual decomposition allows to exploit convex optimization techniques to find the power loading at the source and relay nodes. Further, an optimization for power loading at relaying nodes along with relay selection and sub carrier assignment for the fixed power allocation at the BS is also studied. Lastly, a sub-optimal scheme that explores joint power allocation at all transmitting nodes for the fixed subcarrier allocation and relay assignment is investigated. Finally, simulation results are presented to validate the performance of the proposed schemes.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, accepted in Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies (ETT), formerly known as European Transactions on Telecommunications (ETT

Practices of the I'adah Zuhur after Friday Prayers in Aceh Besar District: An Analysis with the perspectives of Islamic Law Approaches

This study discusses the practice of i'adah dzuhur after the Friday Prayers in Aceh Besar. I'adah dzuhur is carried out by some people as they see that the performance of Friday Prayers is considered to have ignored several conditions. This leads to some people’s decisions to re-perform the dzuhur prayer. This fact encourages the author to explore reasons that some people consider carrying out the i'adah dzuhur after Friday prayers. In addition, the performance is i'adah dzuhur was also driven by perspectives of Muslim scholars graduated from Islamic traditional boarding schools suggesting that the performance of Friday praying has yet to meet certain level of validity. This study is an empirical juridicial study using the Islamic legal approach. The data for the study was collected through interviews, observation and document analysis. In addition, the data was analyzed using qualitative data analysis procedures. The results showed that the performance of Friday prayers in Aceh Besar has met the rules as mandated in the fiqh. However, some people in Aceh Besar are cautious on the eligibility of the Friday prayer performances. This caution is in regard with the two requirements for the validity of Friday: First, the location between mosques should be adjacent with each other. Second, there should be the minimum number of 40 Friday prayer congregations, and all of them should be well educated on the nature of Friday prayers. As a result of being unsure about the fulfillment of these two conditions and caution (ihtiyati), some people perform the i'adah dzuhur after Friday. Such communal understanding is influenced by the alumni of Islamic traditional Boarding schools (dayah) due to several factors. First, the emergence of Islamic figures from the traditional Islamic boarding school; second, the alumni has been active in various socio-religious activities, and third, the alumni have gained some charisma

Dengue fever presenting as quadriparesis due to hypokalaemia: a rare presentation

Dengue is one of the leading causes of arthropod borne viral haemorrhagic fever. Majority of the times, it clinically manifests as fever, arthralgia and rash; however, we present a case of a young man who presented with progressively increasing weakness of all four limbs. Initial investigations showed low potassium, hence he was managed as hypokalaemic periodic paralysis. With initial history of fever and low platelets, dengue was suspected. Dengue antibody was checked which came out to be positive. Potassium was replaced which led to improvement in power of his limbs. He was discharged in a stable condition with a diagnosis of dengue with hypokalaemic quadriparesis

A Review and Identification of Aspects that Contribute towards Creation of Audit Expectation Gap, a Step towards Narrowing This Gap

Bridging of something requires a gap, and Audit expectation gap still exists since the time it was identified in 1970s, and to cover a gap requires identification of areas which needs to be covered, specially the areas which are the reason of creation of this gap. This paper attempts to expand the literature by identifying the factors which result in creation of this gap through a comprehensive review of literature, specially focusing the key countries in which studies are made regarding audit expectation gap as well as to highlight the groups among which the audit expectation gap exists, so that all necessary aspects should be taken into necessary consideration, and necessary attempts should be made to cover it. It is revealed that audit expectation gap exists due to difference of opinions about the factors like auditors’ role with respect to company and financial statements, audit knowledge, auditor’s attitude towards their profession, audit process, auditors’ independence, fraud detection, importance of auditing, preparation of financial statements, performance of company, parties to whom auditors are responsible, prohibitions and regulations of audit firm, reliability of financial reports and usefulness of financial statements among auditors, accountants, bankers, brokers, creditors, directors, educators, government, investors, journalists, jurors, shareholder, students and government. Various policy implications are also discussed herewith. Keywords: fraud, auditors, accountants, auditors’ responsibilities, expectation

Application of deep learning for livestock behaviour recognition: a systematic literature review.

Livestock health and welfare monitoring is a tedious and labour-intensive task previously performed manually by humans. However, with recent technological advancements, the livestock industry has adopted the latest AI and computer vision-based techniques empowered by deep learning (DL) models that, at the core, act as decision-making tools. These models have previously been used to address several issues, including individual animal identification, tracking animal movement, body part recognition, and species classification. However, over the past decade, there has been a growing interest in using these models to examine the relationship between livestock behaviour and associated health problems. Several DL-based methodologies have been developed for livestock behaviour recognition, necessitating surveying and synthesising state-of-the-art. Previously, review studies were conducted in a very generic manner and did not focus on a specific problem, such as behaviour recognition. To the best of our knowledge, there is currently no review study that focuses on the use of DL specifically for livestock behaviour recognition. As a result, this systematic literature review (SLR) is being carried out. The review was performed by initially searching several popular electronic databases, resulting in 1101 publications. Further assessed through the defined selection criteria, 126 publications were shortlisted. These publications were filtered using quality criteria that resulted in the selection of 44 high-quality primary studies, which were analysed to extract the data to answer the defined research questions. According to the results, DL solved 13 behaviour recognition problems involving 44 different behaviour classes. 23 DL models and 24 networks were employed, with CNN, Faster R-CNN, YOLOv5, and YOLOv4 being the most common models, and VGG16, CSPDarknet53, GoogLeNet, ResNet101, and ResNet50 being the most popular networks. Ten different matrices were utilised for performance evaluation, with precision and accuracy being the most commonly used. Occlusion and adhesion, data imbalance, and the complex livestock environment were the most prominent challenges reported by the primary studies. Finally, potential solutions and research directions were discussed in this SLR study to aid in developing autonomous livestock behaviour recognition systems

Passive cooling analysis of an electronic chipset using nanoparticles and metal-foam composite PCM: An experimental study

Thermal management of electronic components is critical for long-term reliability and continuous operation, as the over-heating of electronic equipment leads to decrement in performance. The novelty of the current experimental study is to investigate the passive cooling of electronic equipment, by using nano-enriched phase change material (NEPCM) with copper foam having porosity of 97 %. The phase change material of PT-58 was used with graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) and magnesium oxide (MgO) nanoparticles (NPs), having concentrations of 0.01 wt. % and 0.02 wt. %. Three power levels of 8 W, 16 W, and 24 W, with corresponding heating inputs of 0.77 kW/ m2, 1.54 kW/ m2 and 2.3 kW/ m2, respectively, were used to simulate the heating input to heat sink for thermal characterization. According to results, at 0.77 kW/ m2 heating input the maximum base temperature declined by 13.03 % in 0.02 wt. % GNPs-NEPCM/copper foam case. At heating input of 1.54 kW/ m2, the maximum base temperature reduction of 16 % was observed in case of 0.02 wt. % GNPs-NEPCM/copper foam and 13.1 % in case of 0.02 wt. % MgO-NEPCM/copper foam. Similarly, at heating input of 2.3 kW/ m2, the maximum temperature of base lessened by 12.58 % in case of 0.02 wt. % GNPs-NEPCM/copper foam. The highest time to reach the set point temperature of 50 ⁰ C, 60 ⁰ C, and 70 ⁰ C was in case of GNPs-NEPCM/copper foam composites, while at all power levels MgO-NEPCM/copper foam gave comparable performance to GNPs based composite. Similar trend was observed in the study of enhancement ratio in operation time. From the results, it is concluded that the copper foam incorporation in NEPCM is an effective measure to mitigate the heat sink base temperature and can provide best cooling efficiency at low and higher heating loads

Determinants of Capital Structure in Non-Financial Companies of Pakistan

This paper analyzes the various factors which determine capital structure in non-financial companies listed on Karachi Stock Exchange. Panel data of 113 companies spanning over a period of 10 years is used as our sample. Data is obtained from balance sheet analysis of non-financial listed companies, published by State Bank of Pakistan. Panel data estimation models are employed for data analysis. Our results reveal the factors contributing to determination of capital structure in Pakistan. Profitability and liquidity are negatively related to debt ratio, while free cash flows, interest rates and earnings volatility are positively related to debt ratio. Firm size, growth opportunities, non-debt tax shields and asset tangibility appear to have no significant impact on debt ratio. Keywords?capital structure, debt ratio, profitability, liquidity, free cash flows, tangibility, firm size, earnings volatility, interest rate, non-debt tax shields, growth opportunities, Pakistan