Do External Auditors Perform a Corporate Governance Role in Emerging Markets? Evidence from East Asia

In emerging markets, the concentration of corporate ownership has created agency conflicts between controlling owners and minority shareholders. Conventional corporate control mechanisms such as boards of directors and takeovers are typically weak in containing the agency problem. This study examines whether external independent auditors could be employed as monitors and as bonding mechanisms to alleviate the agency conflict. Using a broad sample of firms from eight East Asian economies, we document that firms are more likely to employ Big Five auditors when they are more subject to the agency problem imbedded in their ultimate ownership structure. One possible reason that this documented relation between auditor choice and the agency problem is more evident than the inconsistent results using U.S. and U.K. data is that alternative governance mechanisms are limited in East Asia. In addition, among East Asian auditees subject to the agency problem, Big Five auditors charge a higher fee and set a lower audit modification threshold while non-Big Five auditors do not. Taken together, the evidence suggests that Big Five auditors in emerging markets do have a corporate governance role.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39784/3/wp400.pd

A meta-narrative review of electronic patient records

This session comprises four papers that consider how systematic review methods may be developed in order to make the best use of complex evidence in education and health. The methods and approaches reflected upon in these papers are not drawn from a single research tradition, but share a common goal of broadening the methodological scope of systematic reviews and better understanding the utilisation of knowledge produced in this way. The first paper (Henry Potts) reports an ongoing review using a meta-narrative approach to make sense of the diverse sources of knowledge regarding electronic patient records. The review method has stressed the importance of understanding knowledge from within the research tradition in which it was produced; it is argued that this has important implications for the way that evidence is utilised in the policy making process. The second paper (Geoff Wong) reflects upon the experience of using an explicit realist approach in the synthesis of the evidence in Internet based learning. This realist synthesis offers a method of making sense of the highly heterogeneous and context dependent evidence which exists in this field thus enabling greater insights into what makes such educational interventions ‘work’. The third paper (Rod Sheaff) reports a review of the predominantly qualitative research literature on organisational structures and their impacts upon policy outcomes in health systems. A scoping study found 14389 relevant papers of which 1568 were selected for review. These studies were very variable in the amount and quality of the qualitative data, hence 'evidence', which they reported. The paper describes an attempt to adapt realist methods so as to synthesise such bodies of research in ways which take account of this variation in the strength of qualitative evidence. The fourth paper (Mark Pearson) draws upon the work of Donald Campbell and colleagues in order to gain a fuller understanding of how systematic reviews are utilised in the policy making process. It is argued that interpretive approaches to understanding policy making (such as rhetorical analysis) need to be tempered with a more nuanced understanding of research validity. The case is made that interpretive approaches not only can, but should, be melded with research validity to increase understanding of the policy making process

The maturing of positive psychology and the emergence of PP 2.0: A book review of Positive Psychology (3rd ed.) by William Compton and Edward Hoffman

Compton and Hoffman’s third edition of Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness and Flourishing is commended for advocating an inclusive positive psychology that not only honours the rich humanistic heritage and the major contributions from mainstream psychology, but also recognizes the two emerging trends within what has become known as PP 2.0. The first is the recognition that suffering and vulnerability provide the foundation for building a solid existential positive psychology of flourishing that can endure the inevitable vicissitudes of life. The second trend is the importance of indigenous positive psychology, especially Eastern psychological systems that offer viable insights and hypotheses about the nature of the self and ultimate happiness

Assessing Jordan B. Peterson’s contribution to the psychology of wellbeing: A book review of 12 Rules for Life

This article first critically examines the Jordan B. Peterson phenomenon and the popular appeal of his book, 12 Rules for Life. It then evaluates this book’s contribution to the psychology of wellbeing in four areas: (a) the psychology of religious values, (b) the importance of personal responsibility, (c) accepting suffering as the foundation for wellbeing, and (d) the process of finding one’s meaning based on personal sacrifice and negotiating a balance between chaos and order. Finally, it examines empirical support for his ideas, as well as his contribution to the emerging domain of existential positive psychology. Finally, implications for the future of positive psychology research and interventions are discussed

Universal Behavior in Large-scale Aggregation of Independent Noisy Observations

Aggregation of noisy observations involves a difficult tradeoff between observation quality, which can be increased by increasing the number of observations, and aggregation quality which decreases if the number of observations is too large. We clarify this behavior for a protypical system in which arbitrarily large numbers of observations exceeding the system capacity can be aggregated using lossy data compression. We show the existence of a scaling relation between the collective error and the system capacity, and show that large scale lossy aggregation can outperform lossless aggregation above a critical level of observation noise. Further, we show that universal results for scaling and critical value of noise which are independent of system capacity can be obtained by considering asymptotic behavior when the system capacity increases toward infinity.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure