Aspects of the motivation for voluntary disclosures: evidence from the publication of value added statements in an emerging economy

This paper investigates the motivation for the voluntary disclosure of financial information by companies in their annual financial statements, by examining aspects of the usefulness of the value added statement. The value added statement is published voluntarily with the annual financial statements and is currently experiencing high levels of publication in South Africa, which is evidently brought about by the high political costs and significant legitimacy threats that companies operating in South Africa are facing. It was found from the literature and from a survey among management that the value added statement was primarily aimed at the employees. Employees have also been regarded as users of financial information in the literature. However, a survey among trade unions in South Africa found that almost no use is made of the value added statement even though the unions make use of other financial information. This indicates that voluntary disclosures do not necessarily satisfy the information needs of their intended audience. The research also indicates that the trade unions might not use the value added statement because they suspect that the statement is being used to reduce political costs and legitimacy threats, and is therefore not reliable. This is a major shortcoming of voluntary disclosures

Approximate Hamilton decompositions of robustly expanding regular digraphs

We show that every sufficiently large r-regular digraph G which has linear degree and is a robust outexpander has an approximate decomposition into edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles, i.e. G contains a set of r-o(r) edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles. Here G is a robust outexpander if for every set S which is not too small and not too large, the `robust' outneighbourhood of S is a little larger than S. This generalises a result of K\"uhn, Osthus and Treglown on approximate Hamilton decompositions of dense regular oriented graphs. It also generalises a result of Frieze and Krivelevich on approximate Hamilton decompositions of quasirandom (di)graphs. In turn, our result is used as a tool by K\"uhn and Osthus to prove that any sufficiently large r-regular digraph G which has linear degree and is a robust outexpander even has a Hamilton decomposition.Comment: Final version, published in SIAM Journal Discrete Mathematics. 44 pages, 2 figure

The value added statement: bastion of social reporting or dinosaur of financial reporting?

South Africa is at present experiencing the highest incidence of publication of the value added statement reported anywhere in the world to date. In addition research investigating the predictive ability of value added information has been conducted in the USA since 1990, even though the value added statement has not been published there. The research reported in this paper sets out to establish whether the value added statement is a disclosure worth considering by companies around the world, by investigating the South African experience with the value added statement. The social accounting theories of organisational legitimacy and political costs were found to be best suited to explain why the value added statement is published. Surveys among the companies publishing the value added statement indicated that management had the employees in mind when they published this information. However, a survey among users has indicated that very little use has been made of the value added statement. The main reason for this seems to be that the unregulated nature of the value added statement allows for inconsistencies in disclosures, which eventually caused users to suspect bias in the reports. The USA evidence that the information has additional predictive power is not confirmed by a South African study, and is complicated by the limited additional information contained in the value added statement. The South African experience with the value added statement does not make a convincing case for publication. Rather, it highlights the need for unbiased and verified social disclosures that will be useful to all the stakeholders of the company. In addition, it has implications for other voluntary social and environmental disclosures

Minimum number of additive tuples in groups of prime order

For a prime number $p$ and a sequence of integers $a_0,\dots,a_k\in \{0,1,\dots,p\}$, let $s(a_0,\dots,a_k)$ be the minimum number of $(k+1)$-tuples $(x_0,\dots,x_k)\in A_0\times\dots\times A_k$ with $x_0=x_1+\dots + x_k$, over subsets $A_0,\dots,A_k\subseteq\mathbb{Z}_p$ of sizes $a_0,\dots,a_k$ respectively. An elegant argument of Lev (independently rediscovered by Samotij and Sudakov) shows that there exists an extremal configuration with all sets $A_i$ being intervals of appropriate length, and that the same conclusion also holds for the related problem, reposed by Bajnok, when $a_0=\dots=a_k=:a$ and $A_0=\dots=A_k$, provided $k$ is not equal 1 modulo $p$. By applying basic Fourier analysis, we show for Bajnok's problem that if $p\ge 13$ and $a\in\{3,\dots,p-3\}$ are fixed while $k\equiv 1\pmod p$ tends to infinity, then the extremal configuration alternates between at least two affine non-equivalent sets.Comment: This version is the same as the published version except for modifications to reflect Reference [5], that was brought to our attention after publicatio

The exact minimum number of triangles in graphs of given order and size

What is the minimum number of triangles in a graph of given order and size? Motivated by earlier results of Mantel and Tur\'an, Rademacher solved the first non-trivial case of this problem in 1941. The problem was revived by Erd\H{o}s in 1955; it is now known as the Erd\H{o}s-Rademacher problem. After attracting much attention, it was solved asymptotically in a major breakthrough by Razborov in 2008. In this paper, we provide an exact solution for all large graphs whose edge density is bounded away from~$1$, which in this range confirms a conjecture of Lov\'asz and Simonovits from 1975. Furthermore, we give a description of the extremal graphs.Comment: Published in Forum of Mathematics, Pi, Volume 8, e8 (2020

The corporatisation of local body entities: A study of financial performance

The New Zealand electricity industry provides us with a unique opportunity to examine how entities responded to major restructuring of the industry. This research studies the financial performance of three entities, each with a different ownership structure, over a 15 year period from 1988 to 2002. The aim is to examine the possible influence of ownership type and corporatisation on the development and financial performance of the entities by examining the changes that took place from the pre-corporatisation period to the post-corporatisation period and comparing and contrasting the performance and funding of the three entities over that time. In this way an assessment is made of the possible influence of ownership type on financial performance. This research can be framed to some extent by agency theory aspects of positive accounting theory. In addition legitimacy theory has been used to explain the behaviour of managers and the process of organizations adapting to a changing environment. Both theories acknowledge the interaction of organizations and their environment. The comparison shows that at the end of the study period the council owned company was the smallest, in terms of total assets, of the three companies examined (although it was similar in size to the biggest one at the outset). The council owned company also returned most capital to its shareholders and is the most conservatively financed one of the three with only 10% debt at the end of 2002 compared to 28% for the trust-held company and 87% for the listed company. The listed company ended up being the biggest and the one with the highest gearing, the highest ROA and the highest profit margin. The study concludes that ownership structure did have an influence on financial performance and level of debt funding

Business and Politics in Early 20th Century Japan

The paper by Masato Kimura seeks to clarify the contributions and limitations of Japanese business diplomacy by looking at the business mission to Britain and the US in 1921-22, and the Japanese Economic Mission to Europe and the United States of 1937. The paper argues that Japanese business diplomacy, while of significance particularly in building up international human networks, was insufficiently influential to prevent political and military conflict.Peter von Staden's paper focuses on the Iron and Steel Promotion Law of 1917 as a case study to explore the significance of the shingikai (deliberative councils) as a forum for formal and significant debate on isses of importance to both business and government. The paper argues that business interests saw the shingikai as a locus where conflicting interests could be resolved, calling into question the widespread assumption of across-the-board covert decision-making in the Japanese government-business relationship.Japanese business diplomacy, economic mission, Europe, Japan, United States, Japanese Iron and Steel Promotion Law, 1937, shingikai (deliberative councils), Japanese government, conflict, covert decision-making, business, politics, early twentieth century.