Enforced Standards Versus Evolution by General Acceptance

Conventions as well as standards influence the practice of financial reporting. Financial reporting standards arise as legislated rules, enforced by the power of law. Conventions evolve over time through trial and practice, and are upheld by socioeconomic rewards and sanctions. Financial reporting in the second half of the twentieth century has been characterized by a preference for legislated standards, and a distinct lack of faith in its evolution as a body of social conventions. Evidence on whether this faith in standards over conventions is justified remains to be marshaled. We present data on privacy practices in e-commerce under the European Union's (EU's) formal regulatory regime prevailing in the United Kingdom (U.K.), and compare it to the data from a previous study of United States (U.S.) practices that evolved in the absence of government laws or enforcement.The codification by the EU law, and the enforcement by the U.K. government, improves neither the disclosure nor the practice of e-commerce privacy relative to the U.S.On the contrary, some evidence shows the unregulated practices in U.S. to be superior. Regulation in the U.K. also appears to stifle development of a market for web assurance services. Both U.S. and U.K. consumers continue to be vulnerable to a small number of e-commerce websites who spam their customers, ignoring the latter's expressed or implied preferences. We explore the implications of these results for understanding the merits of enforced standards and conventions in the domain of financial reporting.

A COMPARISON OF ORGANIC AND CHEMICAL FERTILIZERS FOR TOMATO PRODUCTION

Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) is one of the most popular and versatile vegetables in the world, and organic production with a high yield and desirable quality is a target of many producers. The effect of four different fertilizers (chemical, municipal solid waste compost, cattle manure, and spent mushroom compost) on four commercial tomato cultivars (Redstone, Flat, Peto Pride and Chief) was assessed in this research. The highest yield was obtained with the Chief cultivar when fertilized with chemical fertilizer and the lowest value was obtained with Peto Pride fertilized with 20 tonnes per hectare (t/ha) of cow manure. The difference between the two classes of fertilizers (organic and chemical) was not very high so that organic fertilizers are competitive and may be a suitable replacement for chemical fertilizer. According to our results, to achieve maximum yields with organic fertilizers, 20 t/ha of spent mushroom compost can be recommended for the Redstone cultivar, 30 t/ha of cow manure for Flat, 300 t/ha of municipal solid waste compost for Peto Pride, and 300 t/ha of municipal solid waste compost or 20 t/ha of spent mushroom compost can be recommended for the Chief cultivar. These recommended organic fertilizing regimes achieved cultivar yields comparable to the chemical fertilizer treatments, achieving a yield of 98.4% for Redstone, 99.5% for Flat, 97.6% for Peto Pride, and 95.7% for Chief

Simple Agents, Intelligent Markets

Attainment of rational expectations equilibria in asset markets calls for the price system to disseminate agents’ private information to others. Markets populated by human agents are known to be capable of converging to rational expectations equilibria. This paper reports comparable market outcomes when human agents are replaced by boundedly-rational algorithmic agents who use a simple means-end heuristic. These algorithmic agents lack the capability to optimize; yet outcomes of markets populated by them converge near the equilibrium derived from optimization assumptions. These findings point to market structure (rather than cognition or optimization) being an important determinant of efficient aggregate level outcomes

Decoupling Markets and Individuals: Rational Expectations Equilibrium Outcomes from Information Dissemination among Boundedly-Rational Traders

Attainment of rational expectations equilibria in asset markets calls for the price system to disseminate traders’ private information to others. It is known that markets populated by asymmetrically-informed profit-motivated human traders can converge to rational expectations equilibria. This paper reports comparable market outcomes when human traders are replaced by boundedly-rational algorithmic agents who use a simple means-end heuristic. These algorithmic agents lack the capability to optimize; yet outcomes of markets populated by them converge near the equilibrium derived from optimization assumptions. These findings suggest that market structure is an important determinant of efficient aggregate level outcomes, and that care is necessary not to overstate the importance of human cognition and conscious optimization in such contexts

The role of difluprednate ophthalmic emulsion in clinical practice

The mainstay in the treatment of ocular inflammation, either post-surgical or endogenous, is the use of steroids. While these agents effectively address inflammation, they are not without their risks, including ocular hypertension and acceleration of cataract formation. The most notorious culprits are the strong steroids, such as prednisolone acetate and betamethasone. This review aims to cover the biochemistry and drug development of difluprednate, a novel synthetic strong steroid emulsion. In vivo pharmacokinetics as well as ocular distribution and metabolism are discussed, followed by a comprehensive summary of phase I, II, and III clinical trials evaluating safety and efficacy in patients suffering from postoperative inflammation or anterior uveitis. The objective is to provide an increased familiarity with this newly approved medication as a welcome addition to the ophthalmologist’s armamentarium

Aggregation of Diverse Information with Double Auction Trading among Minimally-Intelligent Algorithmic Agents

Information dissemination and aggregation are key economic functions of financial markets. How intelligent do traders have to be for the complex task of aggregating diverse information (i.e., approximate the predictions of the rational expectations equilibrium) in a competitive double auction market? An apparent ex-ante answer is: intelligent enough to perform the bootstrap operation necessary for the task—to somehow arrive at prices that are needed to generate those very prices. Constructing a path to such equilibrium through rational behavior has remained beyond what we know of human cognitive abilities. Yet, laboratory experiments report that profit motivated human traders are able to aggregate information in some, but not all, market environments (Plott and Sunder 1988, Forsythe and Lundholm 1990). Algorithmic agents have the potential to yield insights into how simple individual behavior may perform this complex market function as an emergent phenomenon. We report on a computational experiment with markets populated by algorithmic traders who follow cognitively simple heuristics humans are known to use. These markets, too, converge to rational expectations equilibria in environments in which human markets converge, albeit slowly and noisily. The results suggest that high level of individual intelligence or rationality is not necessary for efficient outcomes to emerge at the market level; the structure of the market itself is a source of rationality observed in the outcomes

Liquid state bioconversion of palm oil mill effluent for cellulase production: statistical optimization of process conditions

The filamentous fungus Trichoderma harzianum was used for liquid state bioconversion of POME for cellulase production. Statistical optimization was carried out to evaluate the physico-chemical parameters (factors) for maximum cellulase production by 2-level fractional factorial design with six central points. The polynomial regression model was developed using the experimental data including the effects of linear, quadratic and interaction of the factors. The factors involved were substrate (POME) and co-substrate (wheat flour) concentrations, temperature, pH, inoculum and agitation. Statistical analysis showed that the optimum conditions were: temperature of 300C, substrate concentration of 2%, wheat flour concentration of 3%, pH of 4, inoculum of 3% and agitation of 200 rpm. Under these conditions, the model predicted the enzyme production to be about 14 FPU/ml. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the design showed a high coefficient of determination (R2) value of 0.99, thus ensuring a high satisfactory adjustment of the quadratic model with the experimental data

Determinants of IAS Disclosure Compliance in Emerging Economies: Evidence from Exchangelisted Companies in Bangladesh

The study is an attempt to examine empirically the level of disclosure of financial information upon adoption of International Accounting Standards (IASs) in Bangladesh and the association between a number of corporate attributes and levels of disclosure in corporate annual reports in Bangladesh. An unweighted disclosure index comprising 411 items was prepared and applied to 188 corporate annual reports for years ending between January and December 2003. The association between the extent of disclosure and various corporate characteristics was examined using multiple linear regression models. It was found that corporate size, profitability, stock exchange security category (Zcategory or not), size and international link of company's auditor, and multinational subsidiary are all significantly associated with the extent of disclosure. The results were consistent with some previous studies while they contradict with the findings of some other studies

Does Regulatory Change Improve Financial Reporting Timeliness? Evidence from Bangladeshi Listed Companies

The present study is an attempt to empirically test a research question: whether regulatory change can improve financial reporting timeliness in developing countries. Financial reporting delays in Bangladesh have historically been long. In some cases companies are found to publish results of as many as five financial years at a time. Even in 2003, company audits in many cases can be found to take longer than eighteen months. Long audit delay is one of the main causes behind chronic delay observed in issuing financial statements to shareholders. In a significant move to reduce such delays, the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in the year 2000, imposed a mandatory maximum of 120 days to complete audits of listed companies. This provides an interesting setting to examine the research question set out at the beginning. The paper reports the results of multiple linear regressions to test the possible association between financial reporting timeliness and regulatory change while controlling for relevant corporate and auditor attributes. Two levels of analyses were carried out. First, using observations from 1999 and 2001, and then using the observations from 1999 and 2003. The results show that audit delays could be reduced by effective regulatory change. Subsidiaries of MNCs demonstrate significantly shorter delay while companies who do not pay dividends show significantly longer delays. Company size, audit complexity, return on equity, and audit fees (except for one model) do not appear to have any bearing on audit delay