Medical curricula on intimate partner violence in Mozambique

Introduction: The aim of the study described in this paper is to screen medical curricula in relation to the attention paid to intimate partner violence, by applying a framework derived from the international literature. Material and Methods: We screened curricula of five Mozambican medical schools based on a state-of-the-art intimate partner violence curriculum framework. The latter framework was based on a review of the literature. Results: Few medical schools of Mozambique could be identified addressing intimate partner violence in their curriculum. When tackled, intimate partner violence content is mostly dealt within the context of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Community Health and Forensic Medicine rotations. Intimate partner violence contents are integrated as stand-alone modules in some specific subjects. In none of the schools, specific teachers teaching intimate partner violence could be identified. No time allocation was specified to address the topic; no teaching and learning strategies could be identified invoking awareness or supporting basic knowledge acquisition; additionally, hardly any information about related assessment methods was found. Only in one medical school was the subject part of the formal curriculum. Discussion: Intimate partner violence content is hardly and inconsistently addressed. The limited intimate partner violence content tracked in the Mozambican medical schools’ curricula, mainly addresses violence in general, for instance as identified in Orthopaedics or Surgery contexts and sexual violence in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. The inclusion of elements of intimate partner violence in the curriculum remains restricted, questioning the impact of medical education of future practitioners’ competencies. Conclusion: Critical changes are needed in medical curricula to match the current epidemiology of intimate partner violence in Mozambique

The economic determinants of conditional conservatism.

We study the economic determinants of conditional conservatism. Consistent with prior literature, we find that contracting induces only conditional conservatism and litigation induces both conditional and unconditional conservatism. We extend prior evidence by Qiang (2007) by showing that taxation and regulation induce not only unconditional conservatism, but conditional conservatism as well. We show that in certain scenarios taxation and regulation create incentives to shift income from periods with high taxation pressure and high public scrutiny to periods with lower taxation pressure and lower public scrutiny. These income shifting strategies are implemented by recognising current economic losses that, given managerial incentives to report aggressively, would not have been recognized otherwise, or by delaying the recognition of current economic gains that would have been recognized had circumstances been different.Conservatism; Contracting; Taxation; Political costs; Litigation risk;

Board of directors' characteristics and conditional accounting conservatism : Spanish evidence.

Using a sample of Spanish listed firms for the period 1997-2002 we find that firms where the CEO has low influence over the functioning of the board of directors show a greater degree of accounting conservatism. We measure the influence of the CEO over the board of directors using two aggregate indexes combining 6 (8) characteristics of the functioning of the board of directors and its monitoring committees: board size, proportion of non-executive directors, proportion of independent directors, whether the chairman of the board is an executive director, the number of board meetings, and the existence of an audit committee, a nomination/remuneration committee and an executive committee. We define conservatism as the asymmetric recognition speed of good and bad news in earnings, and we measure it following Basu (1997) and Ball and Shivakumar (2005). Our results are robust to alternative specifications and specific controls for investment opportunities and for the endogenous nature of corporate governance and earnings quality. Overall, our evidence shows that firms with strong boards use conservative accounting numbers as a governance tool, even in an institutional setting with low litigation risk such as SpainConservatism; Governance; CEO; Board of Directors; Earnings Timeliness; Spain;

Accounting conservatism and corporate governance.

We predict that firms with stronger corporate governance will exhibit a higher degree of accounting conservatism. Governance level is assessed using a composite measure that incorporates several internal and external characteristics. Consistent with our prediction, strong governance firms show significantly higher levels of conditional accounting conservatism. Our tests take into account the endogenous nature of corporate governance, and the results are robust to the use of several measures of conservatism (market-based and nonmarket-based). Our evidence is consistent with the direction of causality flowing from governance to conservatism, and not vice versa, indicating that governance and conservatism are not substitutes. Finally, we study the impact of earnings discretion on the sensitivity of earnings to bad news across governance structures. We find that, on average, strong-governance firms appear to use discretionary accruals to inform investors about bad news in a timelier mannerConditional conservatism; Corporate governance; Managerial discretion;

The effect of earnings management on the asymmetric timeliness of earnings.

Is earnings management affecting (driving) the measures of earnings conservatism?Ball et al. (2000) point out that the asymmetry in the recognition of good and bad news in earnings (faster recognition of bad news: earnings conservatism) is more pronounced in common‐law than in code‐law based accounting regimes. However, comparative studies on earnings conservatism in Europe have failed to identify significant differences between common‐law and code‐law based countries. We argue that in code‐law based countries managers have incentives to reduce earnings consistently. This enhances the association between earnings and returns in bad news periods. We find that after controlling for discretionary accruals, the differential earnings response to bad news in Germany and France decreases significantly.Conservatism; Earnings management; Europe; Comparability;

Earnings quality in ex-post failed firms.

This paper analyses earnings quality in ex-post failed firms. Using a large sample of UK bankrupt firms, we find that failed firms manage earnings upwards in the four years prior to failure. This manipulation is achieved in two ways: (1) through accounting (accruals) manipulation; and (2) by implementing real operating actions that deviate from normal practice. We show that these two types of manipulation lead to reduced earnings reliability. We use conditional conservatism as a proxy for reliability, as prior literature links conditional accounting conservatism to better governance and positive economic outcomes. Our results show that conditional conservatism decreases substantially in the years prior to failure. Finally, we show that accruals manipulation is more pronounced in ex-post bankrupt firms with low ex-ante probability of failure, and that ex-post bankrupt firms with high ex-ante failure probability, having likely exhausted the opportunities for accrual manipulation, manipulate real operations more aggressivelyFirm failure; Accruals management; Real earnings management; Conditional conservatism; Earnings quality; Bankruptcy;

Conditional conservatism and cost of capital.

We empirically test the association between conditional conservatism and cost of equity capital. Conditional conservatism imposes stronger verification requirements for the recognition of economic gains than economic losses, resulting in earnings that reflect losses faster than gains. This asymmetric reporting of gains and losses is predicted to lower firm cost of equity capital by increasing bad news reporting precision, thereby reducing information uncertainty (Guay and Verrecchia 2007) and the volatility of future stock prices (Suijs 2008). Using standard asset-pricing tests, we find a significant negative relation between conditional conservatism and excess average stock returns over the period 1975-2003. This evidence is corroborated by further tests on the association between conditional conservatism and measures of implied cost of capital derived from analysts’ forecasts.Conditional conservatism; Asymmetric reporting; Cost of capital; Information precision; Uncertainty;

Modeling an Aquifer: Numerical Solution to the Groundwater Flow Equation

We present a model of groundwater dynamics under stationary flow and governed by Darcy's Law of water motion through porous media, we apply it to study a 2D aquifer with water table of constant slope comprised of an homogeneous and isotropic media, the more realistic case of an homogeneous anisotropic soil is also considered. Taking into account some geophysical parameters we develop a computational routine, in the Finite Difference Method, that solves the resulting elliptic partial equation, both in a homogeneous isotropic and homogeneous anisotropic media. After calibration of the numerical model, this routine is used to begin a study of the Ayamonte-Huelva aquifer in Spain, a modest analysis of the system is given, we compute the average discharge vector as well as its root mean square as a first predictive approximation of the flux in this system, providing us a signal of the location of best exploitation; long term goal is to develop a complete computational tool for the analysis of groundwater dynamics.Comment: 13 pages and 12 figure