The Expectation Gap in Internet Financial Reporting: Evidence from an Emerging Capital Market

The development of the internet as a global medium has significantly impacted financial reporting environment of the companies. Recently, companies have started reporting their financial results and other information relating to business on their web pages. The internet offers the facility to provide all interested groups with information to make well-informed, timely investment decision thus reducing the information advantages of institutional investors and information intermediaries. This study examines the level of internet financial reporting in Turkey. Furthermore, it tries to find out whether there is an expectation gap in internet financial reporting. In this study, “expectation gap” refers to the difference between (1) what financial statement users perceive important in decision making process to be and (2) what companies actually disclose or present in their web pages. Our findings indicate that an expectation gap exists; financial statement users have higher expectations for various facets than what companies actually report in the areas such as; reports of analysts, phone number to investor relations, segmental reporting, financial data in processable format, and summary of financial data. Our findings serve as evidence that the companies should engage in appropriate actions to reduce this expectation gap.Internet, Financial Reporting, Turkey

IFRS 2005 in Turkey; Can We See the Evidences on the Financial Reports of the Companies Listed?

The Turkish economy has been emerging one during the last decades. So, has been the Turkish Capital Market. This study focuses on the IFRS applications in 2005 in Turkey. Particularly has dealt with the following research questions: First, what has been the position statement of the goodwill and the deferred taxes on the financial statements investigated? Second, what has been the importance of the amounts of the goodwill and the deferred taxes on financial statements investigated? In order to find out the reasonable answers to the questions above, the financial reports IFRS applied of the top 100 companies listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange have been analyzed. Data available on the web pages were obtained from financial reports of those. The empirical research was conducted through a statistical software package. The financial statements as of December 31, 2003, 2004, and 2005 have been covered by the study. The results have shown the impacts of the items covered in the study on the financial positions of the companies investigated.IFRS, Emerging Economies, Goodwill, Deferred Taxes

Derivatives Usage in Risk Management By Turkish Non-Financial Firms and Banks: A Comparative Study

The purpose of this study to compare the previous research about how the nonfinancial companies listed in the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) and deposit banks in Turkey have disclosed information regarding the usage of derivatives, and the accounting treatment of these derivatives. The results of these studies indicate that banks and the non-financial companies listed in the ISE-100 Indices, which represent 86 % of the market capitalization, use derivatives mainly for hedging purposes. However, the evidence that they usually prefer reporting their gains/losses arising from these transactions as “held for trading” instead of applying “hedge accounting”, since they could not meet the compulsory criterions described in the IAS 39.Derivative Instruments, IAS 39, IFRS 7, Hedge Accounting,

The Value Relevance of IFRS: The Case of Turkey

Accounting standards that are mostly compatible with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are required for consolidatedfinancial statements of all Turkish listed firms starting from 2005 fiscal year end. Before that, financial reporting in Turkey was closely related to taxreporting. Until 2003, all Turkish listed firms were preparing their financial statements in accordance with the local standards issued by the CapitalMarket Board of Turkey. In this study, I examine the relative and incremental value relevance of earnings and the book value of equity under CapitalMarket Board (CMB) Accounting Standards (2001-2002) and under IFRS (2005-2006) for Turkish listed firms. I compare these two periods toinvestigate whether the mandatory adoption of IFRS increase relevance of earnings and book value of equity which are accepted as proxies ofaccounting quality. I find evidence that the value relevance of earnings and book value of equity has increased significantly after adopting IFRS. Inaddition, I find that the incremental value relevance of earnings increased between the CMB accounting standards period and the IFRS period.However, the incremental value relevance of book value of equity degreased in the same period

A modified Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for normality

In this paper we propose an improvement of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for normality. In the current implementation of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, a sample is compared with a normal distribution where the sample mean and the sample variance are used as parameters of the distribution. We propose to select the mean and variance of the normal distribution that provide the closest fit to the data. This is like shifting and stretching the reference normal distribution so that it fits the data in the best possible way. If this shifting and stretching does not lead to an acceptable fit, the data is probably not normal. We also introduce a fast easily implementable algorithm for the proposed test. A study of the power of the proposed test indicates that the test is able to discriminate between the normal distribution and distributions such as uniform, bi-modal, beta, exponential and log-normal that are different in shape, but has a relatively lower power against the student t-distribution that is similar in shape to the normal distribution. In model settings, the former distinction is typically more important to make than the latter distinction. We demonstrate the practical significance of the proposed test with several simulated examples.Closest fit; Kolmogorov-Smirnov; Normal distribution

Determination of characteristic compressive strength of self- compacting and vibrated concrete

The use of self-compacting concrete is increasing due to the demand of faster work performance and better working conditions. The leadership countries in this field are European, and especially Scandinavian countries. Also Slovenian constructors are using self- compacting concrete where performing mechanical vibrations is difficult or impossibile. The purpose of the present Graduation thesis is to determinate the characteristic compressive strength of self-compacting concrete taking in consideration the standards and adequate statistic procedure. The results will be compared with those of vibrated concrete

A Multi Hidden Recurrent Neural Network with a Modified Grey Wolf Optimizer

Identifying university students' weaknesses results in better learning and can function as an early warning system to enable students to improve. However, the satisfaction level of existing systems is not promising. New and dynamic hybrid systems are needed to imitate this mechanism. A hybrid system (a modified Recurrent Neural Network with an adapted Grey Wolf Optimizer) is used to forecast students' outcomes. This proposed system would improve instruction by the faculty and enhance the students' learning experiences. The results show that a modified recurrent neural network with an adapted Grey Wolf Optimizer has the best accuracy when compared with other models.Comment: 34 pages, published in PLoS ON

The Value Relevance of IFRS: The Case of Turkey

Accounting standards that are mostly compatible with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are required for consolidated financial statements of all Turkish listed firms starting from 2005 fiscal year end. Before that, financial reporting in Turkey was closely related to tax reporting. Until 2003, all Turkish listed firms were preparing their financial statements in accordance with the local standards issued by the Capital Market Board of Turkey. In this study, I examine the relative and incremental value relevance of earnings and the book value of equity under Capital Market Board (CMB) Accounting Standards (2001-2002) and under IFRS (2005-2006) for Turkish listed firms. I compare these two periods to investigate whether the mandatory adoption of IFRS increase relevance of earnings and book value of equity which are accepted as proxies of accounting quality. I find evidence that the value relevance of earnings and book value of equity has increased significantly after adopting IFRS. In addition, I find that the incremental value relevance of earnings increased between the CMB accounting standards period and the IFRS period. However, the incremental value relevance of book value of equity degreased in the same period

Timeliness of financial reporting in emerging capital markets:Evidence from Turkey

Timely financial reporting is an essential ingredient for a well-functioning capital market. This study has two objectives. The first one is to measure the extend of timeliness of financial reporting in a developing country, Turkey. The second one is to establish the impact of both company specific and audit related factors on timeliness of financial reporting in Turkey. This study reports on the results of an empirical investigation of the timeliness of financial reports by 211 non-financial companies listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange. The descriptive analysis indicates that 59% of the companies that prepares separate financial statements and 66% of the companies that prepares consolidated financial statements release their financial statements less than the maximum time allowed after the financial year-end. 28% of the companies that prepares separate financial statements and 16% of the companies that prepares consolidated financial statements exceeded the regulatory deadline. The multivariate regression analysis indicates that both sign of income, audit opinion, auditor firm and industry affect timeliness. The findings indicate that the companies, which report net income, have standard audit opinion, and operate in manufacturing industry release their financial statements earlier while the companies are audited by the big four audit firms report their financial statements later.Timeliness, financial reporting, accounting, Turkey

Why are Women Underrepresented in IT? The Role of Implicit and Explicit Gender Identity

This study demonstrates that gender identity is an important factor affecting female university students’ decisions to major in IT and join the IT profession. It introduces the concept of implicit gender identity, defined as the degree to which people unconsciously, automatically, and uncontrollably associate themselves with their biological sex. Data were obtained from 185 students by means of a survey and the Implicit Association Test. The findings reveal that gender identity plays different roles between men and women in its influence on IT major and career choices. Implicit gender identity is a strong predictor of IT major and career choices for women but not for men. Explicit gender identity influences IT career choice only for women. Males’ and females’ IT major and career choices are influenced by normative pressures to the same degree. This study shows that gender identity can be a reason driving women away from the IT field