Clémentine Tholas-Disset and Karen A. Ritzenhoff (eds), Humor, Entertainment and Popular Culture During World War I

This well presented, and well illustrated, volume takes up the challenge of placing the horror and devastation of the Great War in the context of the light-hearted responses to it. The potential grotesque at the heart of such a juxtaposition–gueules cassées setting out to se fendre la pipe–brings into focus both the role of humor as propaganda and the absolute necessity for a powerful, re-humanizing strategy among those close, and closest, to the carnage. This is a bold move on the editors’ p..

The Share Price Effects of Dividend Taxes and Tax Imputation Credits

We examine the hypothesis that dividend taxes are capitalized into share prices by focusing on investors' implicit valuations of retained earnings versus paid-in equity. Retained earnings are distributable as taxable dividends, whereas paid-in equity is distributable as a tax-free return of capital. Consistent with dividend tax capitalization, firm-level results for the United States indicate that accumulated retained earnings are valued less per unit than contributed capital. In addition, differences in dividend tax rates across U.S. tax regimes are associated with predictable differences in the magnitude of the implied tax discount for retained earnings, as are differences in dividend tax rates across Australia, Japan, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

Accounting Standards, Information Flow, and Firm Investment Behavior

We present a description of two different accounting regimes that govern reporting practice in most developed countries. 'One-book' countries, e.g. Germany, use their tax books as the basis for financial reporting and 'two-book' countries, e.g. the United States, keep the books largely separate. We derive a structural model and formalize a testable implication of our discussion: firms in one-book countries may be reluctant to claim some tax benefits if reductions in taxable income may be misinterpreted by financial market participants as signals of lower profitability. Econometric estimates suggest that accounting regime differences play an important role in describing domestic investment patterns both within and across countries.

Do management forecasts of earnings affect stock prices in Japan?

One of the major differences that has attracted a great deal of attention is the relatively high average price/earnings (PE) ratio for the stocks listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. A question sometimes raised in the popular press is whether the difference in PEs suggests that US stocks are undervalued or Japanese stocks are overvalued.1 Of course, such conjectures are not well-founded unless we understand the differences in the institutional characteristics of the two markets. Some of the differences raise subtle but important questions, such as whether a particular institutional arrangement can be adopted in other environments. Just as we have seen the transfer of US accounting practices to non-US companies active in international capital markets, certain institutional characteristics of Japan's capital markets might lead to related changes in other countries. This paper considers one such characteristic, management forecasts, which we believe to be a likely candidate for such a global transfer

A comparison of relations between security market prices, returns and accounting measures in Japan and the United States

Extensive research and discussion has occurred over the last two decades relating to the relevance of accounting differences in the valuation of securities in international capital markets. Yet little empirical evidence exists which evaluates how the accounting measures in Japan are associated with stock prices or returns, especially over periods other than short-event windows of a few days, weeks or months. We see use of P/E relatives in discussions of cost of capital and broad international comparisons. For such evaluations to be made usefully we should expect fundamental associations between the accounting and stock market measures to be equivalent across the countries, subject to accounting differences. That is, if equivalent basic associations do not exist then it is not clear what it means to make such international comparisons. This paper evaluates such associations in Japan and compares them to a sample of firms in the United States using a methodology recently developed in Easton and Harris and Easton, Harris and Ohlson and considered for Germany in Harris and Lang

An Evaluation of the Current State and Future of XBRL and Interactive Data for Investors and Analysts

In 2009, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mandated that public companies submit portions of annual (10-K) and quarterly (10-Q) reports—in a digitized format known as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). The goal of this type of data was to provide more relevant, timely, and reliable “interactive” data to investors and analysts. The XBRL-formatted SEC filings information is meant to allow users to manipulate and organize the financial information according to their own purposes faster, cheaper, and more easily than current alternatives. But, how useful and usable is the resulting data? The authors—early proponents of interactive data—completed a review of the state of XBRL, with a focus on its usefulness and usability for security analysis. The study found, that investors and analysts question the reliability of the data, the simplicity and stability of the underlying taxonomy and architecture, as well as the lack of user tools that add value and are easily integrated into an investor’s or analyst’s existing work flow and tools. As a result, the researchers conclude that XBRL has promised more than it has delivered to date and is at risk of becoming obsolete for use by analysts and investors. They also offer specific recommendations to filers, regulators, and the XBRL development community that may make the formatted data more useful and useable to the very investors and analysts the SEC's XBRL mandate intended to serve