The Glass Menagerie Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Glass Menagerie - Essay Example C. He feels like a trapped animal that finally escapes its shackled existence. III: Amanda Wingfield’s illusionary world. A. Amanda is an old Southern belle who cannot accept her new status. B. She is partially guilty for her children’s faults. C. She tries to live in the present and past, unsuccessfully. The Difficulty of Accepting Reality Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie offers a minimal approach at the cost of an abundant plot and dramatic realism, so that he can portray â€Å"the totality of experience†¦ through symbolic implications, psychological action and lack of other distractions† (Bloom 19). His characters face such transformation that they find it impossible to relate to and cope with their present reality. Each member of the Wingfield family is unable to overcome this difficulty and each one of them withdraws into a private world of illusion where they find the comfort and meaning that the real world does not seem to offer. The phy sically and emotionally crippled Laura lives in a private world populated by glass animals, which are, just like her own inner self, dangerously delicate: â€Å"Oh, be careful - If you breathe, it breaks!† (Williams 64). Despite her problems, she harshly contrasts the other members of her household, with their selfishness and grudging sacrifices, by exalting pure compassion. She is also compared to a unicorn, a mythical being which is being referred to as extinct by Jim, and is also lonely, just like Laura due to its uniqueness. Once broken, it loses its magical traits and becomes just an ordinary horse which she gives to Jim as a souvenir, because it does not belong to her imaginative glass menagerie world any more, an enticing world grounded on fragile illusions. Unlike his sister, Tom is capable of functioning in the real world, as it is noted in his holding down a job and talking to strangers. He reads literature, he writes poetry and dreams of higher things in life, of e scape and adventure. Yet, he is inextricably bound to the squalid, petty world of the Wingfield household, as this is the only thing we get a deeper insight into. He bares his thoughts on his sister, mother, his warehouse job, precisely the things he claims he wishes to escape from. It becomes all too obvious that he has no more motivation than his sister in trying to obtain personal success, romantic relationships or even ordinary friendships, but just retreats into fantasies that literature, movies and drunkenness provide for him, until finally he leaves both his mother and sister behind, because as Williams puts it: â€Å"to escape from a trap, he has to act without pity† (Williams xiii). Their mother Amanda’s relationship with reality is the most complicated one. As an aged Southern belle who has lost all the major traits of one, she is partial to real world values and longs for social and financial success. She cannot accept her new status in society, Lauraâ€℠¢s peculiarity, the fact that Tom is not a real and successful businessman, and that she herself might be partially responsible for the flaws of her children. She yearns to make things better for all of them, yet she does it in all the wrong ways. Her retreat into illusion is in many ways more pathetic than that of her children’s, because she wistfully distorts reality, while at the same time, being painfully convinced she is not doing so. She tries desperately to hold on to both worlds, that of the present and the past, but realizes that both are crumbling beneath her

Investment between China and Africa Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Investment between China and Africa - Essay Example The researcher states that many studies have shown that China is currently the major destination of foreign direct investment from many parts of the world. However, Chinese have also been aggressive in making investments in other foreign countries with African region being their major target. Just like many other developed countries, China has been engaged in a vicious competition with other countries like the USA and other developed European countries like the United Kingdom in the scramble for resources in Africa. This has been attributed by the fact that Africa is currently the leading continent with so much untapped potential that includes unexploited natural resources and availability of abundant business opportunities resulting from the undeveloped nature of most of its countries. This has made governments of various states apply different strategies in order to have at least a significant pie in these developing economies, one being creating good relationships. China is one of the giant economies in the world today has been applying all means possible in luring African countries to enter into treaties and good business relations, a factor that has made some of the major Chinese companies establish their operations in Africa. Some studies have shown that China is the leading bilateral trade partner with Africa, a two-way trade that has dramatically been growing in the past two decades through the major growth has experienced in the last one decade. In the year 2011, the bilateral trade between China and Africa is estimated to be over US$166 billion from US$10.6 billion in the year 2000. This growth can only be termed as incredible and is likely to grow at an even higher rate in the coming years.

Earnings Management and Accrual Accounting

Earnings Management and Accrual Accounting Contents (Jump to) Introduction Motivations for Earnings Management   Techniques 11 Groups to Manage Earnings Modified Jones Model   Limitations of the Earnings Management Models Implications and Application of Earnings Management References EARNINGS MANAGEMENT Introduction There has been significant attention placed on earnings management from regulators, the financial press, and academic researchers in recent years. Most are in agreement that earnings management does occur; however, there is no uniform definition for what it is or how to detect it. What are earnings and what is earnings management? Simply stated, earnings are the accounting profits of a company. Stakeholders (current or potential providers of debt and equity capital, employees, suppliers, customers, auditors, analysts, rating agencies, and regulators) use earnings to make important financial decisions. Many investors view earnings as value relevant data that is more informative than cash flow data. (Healy and Wahlen 1999) Others have suggested that current earnings are better predictors of future cash flows than are current cash flows. (Dechow 1994) In the US, these profits are derived using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) a system based on the accrual method, which measures the performance and position of a company by recognizing economic events regardless of when cash transactions occur. The generalidea is thateconomic events are recognized by matching revenues to expensesat the time in which the transactionoccurs rather than when payment is made (or received). This methodallows the current cashinflows/outflowsto be combined withfuture expected cash inflows/outflowsto give a more accurate picture of a companys current financial condition.The objectives of financial reporting and how these relate to the definition of accrual accounting, as laid out by the FASB in various Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts: The primary focus of financial reporting is information about an enterprises performance provided by measures of earnings and its components [CON1, para. 43]. Accrual accounting attempts to record the financial effects on an entity of transactions, events, and circumstances that have cash consequences for the entity in the periods in which those transactions, events, and circumstances occur rather than only in the periods in which cash is received or paid by the entity [CON6, para. 139]. It uses accrual, deferral, and allocation procedures whose goal is to relate revenues, expenses, gains, and losses to periods to reflect an entitys performance during a period instead of merely listing its cash receipts and outlays. Thus, recognition of revenues, expenses, gains, and losses and the related increments or decrements in assets and liabilities including matching of costs and revenues, allocation, and amortization is the essence of using accrual accounting to measure performance of enti ties [CON6, para. 145]. The principal goal of accrual accounting is to help investors assess the entitys economic performance during a period through the use of basic accounting principles such as revenue recognition and matching. There is evidence that as a result of the accruals process, reported earnings tend to be smoother than underlying cash flows (accruals tend to be negatively related to cash flows) and that earnings provide better information about economic performance to investors than cash flows (Dechow 1994) This idea raises the following key questions: What is the objective of accrual accounting? How far should management go in helping investors form rational expectations about the firms performance through their accruals choices and when does this activity become earnings management? To the extent that these accruals choices often operate to smooth reported earnings relative to the underlying cash flows, when does the appropriate exercise of managerial discretion become earnings management? Perhaps by its very nature, accrual accounting dampens the fluctuations in an entitys underlying cash flows to generate a number that is more useful to investors (for assessing economic performance and predicting future cash flows) than current-period operating cash flows. To characterize this as earnings management, we need to define the point at which managers accrual decisions result in too much smoothing and becomes earnings management. To think more generally about how earnings management is defined, consider the following representative definitions from the academic literature: a purposeful intervention in the external financial reporting process, with the intent of obtaining some private gain Schipper (1989) Earnings management occurs when managers use judgment in financial reporting and in structuring transactions to alter financial reports to either mislead some stakeholders about the underlying economic performance of the company, or to influence contractual outcomes that depend on reported accounting numbers. Healy and Wahlen (1999) Although widely accepted, these definitions are difficult to operationalize directly using attributes of reported accounting numbers since they center on managerial intent, which is unobservable. Turning to the professional literature, clear definitions of earnings management are just as difficult to discern from pronouncements, statements, and speeches by regulators. An extreme form of earnings management, financial fraud, is well-defined (again in terms of managerial intent) as: the deliberate misrepresentation of the financial condition of an enterprise accomplished through the intentional misstatement or omission of amounts or disclosures in the financial statements to deceive financial statement users. (Certified Fraud Examiners, 1993) In recent speeches and writings, regulators at the SEC seem to have a broader concept in mind than financial fraud when they talk about earnings management, although a strict definition has not been made explicit. In particular, while financial reporting choices that explicitly violate GAAP can clearly constitute both fraud and earnings management, it also seems that systematic choices made within GAAP can also constitute earnings management according to recent SEC discussions. The notion that earnings management can occur within the bounds of GAAP is consistent with the academic definitions described above but is somewhat startling if the idea is that this type of earnings management will lead to explicit adverse consequences for managers and firms (in the form of SEC enforcement activity) in the same way as financial fraud. This is an important point because of the question as to whether income smoothing and other similar processes constitute earnings management and whether they ar e to be treated in the same manner as fraud. Former SEC Chairman Levitt indicated that flexibility in accounting allows firms to keep pace with business innovations. Abuses such as earnings management occur when people exploit this pliancy. Trickery is employed to obscure actual financial volatility. This in turn, masks the true consequences of managements decisions. (1998). This implies that within-GAAP choices can be considered to be earnings management if they are used to obscure or mask true economic performance, bringing us back again to managerial intent. This idea is reinforced by our reading of SAB 99, which also points to the intent to deceive. As accounting researchers have discovered, implementing this type of definition requires a reliable measure of the true consequences of managements decisions that is, the earnings number that would have resulted from a neutral operation of the process (absent some form of managerial intent). The crucial issues seems to be why firms choose to manage earnings, how do firms manage their earnings, how do we measure earnings management given that implementing GAAP requires management to make judgments and estimates, and what are the implications of earnings management. Motivation Management can have many motivations for managing their earnings. The ultimate motive for earnings management, however, is to aesthetically enhance the performance of a company in the eyes of its stakeholders. The literature cites motives such as stock market incentives, signaling or concealing private information, political cost, internal motives, lending contracts, management compensation contracts, and regulatory issues. A primary purpose of earnings management is to enhance the wealth of its stakeholders such as owners since they are hired by the board of directors and the board of directors is hired by the owners.   To enhance the benefits of the owners of a firm, management may manage earnings in order to meet analyst forecasts for present and future periods (Burgstahler and Eames 1998). An owner of that firms stock may be rewarded by the appreciation of its stock value which directly relates to the owners wealth. Meeting earnings forecast is an important factor on the stocks price. The more consensuses among analysts forecasts, the stronger incentive management has to meet those forecasts (Payne and Robb 2000).   Moreover, the direction of analysts recommendation (buy or sell) about a company can bias managements decision to manage earnings. If the company misses its earnings this can have a negative impact on stock returns and negatively impact managements compensation (Matsunaga and Park 2001).   However, if management can meet or beat analyst expectations, then this can result in higher stock returns (Bartov et al., 2002). The management of earnings has also been seen prior to a firms equity offering such as seasoned equity offers (Teoh, Welch, and Wong 1998b), initial public offerings (Teoh, Welch, and Wong 1998a; Teoh, Wong, and Rao 1998), and stock financed acquisitions (Erickson and Wang 1999). Management may have the incentive to signal positive information or to conceal negative information.   If a firm is performing poorly or having financial struggles, management may conceal this performance using earnings management (Rosner 2003). On the other hand, management may want to signal the firms future performance by revealing more information about a companys future earnings and cash flow prospects (Tucker and Zarowin 2006). Earnings management can also be used to shift earnings to other periods for optimal tax planning (Shane and Stock 2006). The shifting of earnings for tax purposes can be a sign of strength. Other reasons to manage earnings can include meeting bank loan covenants. In order to maintain bank loan covenants, management may have to achieve a certain level of earnings. Failure to reach the requisite earnings can cause the lender to call the loans due, creating liquidity problems for the firm and signaling firm weakness to the bank and other creditors. The li terature finds that firms that have violated covenants are more likely to manage earnings, possibly to prevent future defaults (Sweeney 1994).   When earnings management is conducted, managers use it as a tool to enhance perception of their management capabilities during the current reporting period, implying that this type of performance will continue in future reporting periods. They expect to be compensated handsomely for their business acumen.   However, Guidry et al. (1998) found that divisional managers for large multinational firms are likely to defer income when the earnings target in their bonus plan will not be met. This indicates that management is willing to take a bath in the current period in order to reap the benefits in a future period.   Moreover, it was found in Murphy (2001) that management is more likely to smooth earnings when using internal performance standards (budget goals and prior year) than external standards. Another form of compensation manipulation happens when there is a cap on the bonus awards. Then management is more likely to report an accrual that defers income when the cap is reached ( Healy 1985 and Hotausen et al, 1995). Furthermore, management may manage earnings depending on whether they are joining or leaving the firm. A new CEO may be inclined to downwards earnings management (transferring the benefit to future periods), while a retiring CEO may use upward earnings management (reaping the benefits in the current period) (Godfrey et al., 2003). Certain businesses have regulatory requirements to stay in business. A popular study of earnings management in the literature is the application by banks to manage earnings in order to meet capital requirements and by insurance companies to manage earnings to meet risk regulatory requirements. The literature supports evidence that when banks are close to minimum capital requirements they overstate loan loss provisions, understate loan write-offs, and recognize abnormal realized gains on securities portfolios (Moyer 1990; Scholes et al. 1990; Beatty et al. 1995; Collins et al. 1995). Additionally, financially weak property casualty insurers that risk regulatory attention understate claim loss reserves (Petroni 1992). The literature has also shown that firms facing anti-trust or potential anti-trust scrutiny are likely to use earnings management. These firms or others vulnerable to adverse political consequences have incentives to manage earnings to appear less profitable (Watts and Zi mmerman 1978). Moreover, firms under investigation for anti-trust violations reported income decreasing abnormal accruals in investigation years (Cahan 1992). Techniques Earnings Management can take place by underestimating or overestimating either revenues or expenses. It can be done to affect future earnings as well as current earnings. There are two main types: Cosmetic Earnings Management using accounting choices from GAAP: also called accrual based earnings management. It happens when managers use their judgment and discretion to make choices related to accounting principles that can alter earnings in the current or a future period. An example is the modification of depreciation rates, where an increase (decrease) in the expense may occur in the current period leading to a decrease (increase) in the future (Nelson et. al. 2003). Real-Activity Earnings Management using operating decisions: this type of earnings management is when managers make decisions that affect the real operations in the firm. This type is more dangerous both to the firm and to the managers. Managers would be at a higher risk of being caught. As for the firms, real activities earnings management affects the cash flow, and consequently has a higher impact on the companys future. For example, a manager can give discounted sales prices in order to boost sales and consequently meet some target revenues (Roychowdhury 2006). The most popular and successful techniques used to manage earnings can be categorized into 11 groups: 1. Cookie jar (Cosmetic): managers create a reserve or a financial slack to boost earnings in future periods by recording more expenses in the present. For example, when the manager reports higher inventory cost in the current period, it will allow him to reduce this in the future. (Levitt 1998) 2. Big bath (Cosmetic): when the management decides to eliminate or restructure a subsidiary or an operation, GAAP permits the management to record an estimate charge against the income. Managers can record higher charges to dissimulate other charges. (Levitt 1998) 3. Big bet on the future (Cosmetic): when a company acquires another one, managers can get an immediate earnings boost by including the acquired companys earnings in consolidated earnings. On the other hand, to boost future earnings, managers can write-off the acquired in-progress RD costs against present earnings, and thus protecting future earnings from these charges. (Levitt 1998) 4. Flushing of investment portfolio (Real): passive investments (less than 20% ownership) can be classified as trading securities (reported in operating income) or available-for-sale securities (not reported in operating income until sold). Earnings can be managed by timing sales (sell securities that gained (lost) value to increase (decrease) earnings) or reclassifying the security portfolio (from trading security to available for sale to move gain or loss from or to the income statement) 5. Throw out a problem child (Real): When a subsidiary underperforms, it decreases the overall company earnings. It is usually expected to cause a bigger decrease in the future. Managers may act in several ways to counter that: sell the underperforming subsidiary and consequently report a gain or a loss (based on the managers discretion). Another way is to spin-off the subsidiary by distributing or exchanging the shares with current shareholders and in this way the burden is transferred to the latter. 6. Change in GAAP (Cosmetic): Management can manage earnings by undergoing changes to the present accounting standards. For example, it may volunteer for early adoption of new accounting standards, such as the 1985s standard, which allowed companies whose pension assets exceeded their pension liabilities to count the difference as income (Lev 1989). This technique allows for improved revenue and improved expense recognition. 7. Amortization, Depreciation, and Depletion (Cosmetic): Writing-off long-term assets can be managed by selecting write-off method and period, estimating salvage value, or reclassifying as non-operating use. 8. Sale/Leaseback and asset exchange (Real): selling a long-term asset that has unrealized gain (loss) can be used to manage earnings. For example, selling a building, which is carried in the balance sheet at $25 million, for $40 million, will give a boost to the current earnings by $15 million (not considering tax and transaction costs). Another way is to sell the building and lease it back (recording gains or losses). However, if the management wishes not to record any gains or losses, the long-term asset could be exchanged with a similar one (for example for exchanging a warehouse for another one that is nearer to a production site) 9. Operating vs. Non-operating Income (Cosmetic): Income items can be classified as Operating income (recurring or core income, expected to continue in the future) or non-operating income (non-recurring, not expected to affect future). GAAP permits to management to classify an item as one or the other. The managers judgment will then affect the financial analysts forecasts, which are based on the operating or core earnings. For instance, disposition of a major manufacturing plant can be classified either as special charges (Operating income) or discontinued charges (non-operating income) based on the managers discretion. 10.Early Retirement of Corporate Debt (Real): Managers may decide to prematurely sell long-term corporate debts (bonds) which are usually recorded at an amortized value. The timing of the sale may lead to gains or losses due to the difference between the amortized value and the book value. 11.Stock buybacks (Real): This technique does not affect earnings, however it does affect earnings per share. By repurchasing their own shares, an act that is considered internal and thus not required to be reported under GAAP, companies will report higher EPS. Consider a company with 1 million shares. If the earnings are $4 million, EPS = $4 million/1million shares = $4 per share. Now if the company buys back 100,000 shares, the same earnings would have to be divided by 900,000 shares, the reported EPS would be $4.44 per share. Earnings Management Models and The Accrual Generation Process Accruals have the desirable traits of giving summary measures of firms income and accounting choice.   In earnings management research, accruals are divided into discretionary (DA) and non-discretionary (NDA). Most research has focused on the detection of DA. It is customary to start earnings management studies with the study of behavior of sales over time. First, in the budgeting process, sales determine the firms production and inventory levels, which in turn determine cost of goods sold, operating expenses, and investment decisions. Second, sales have the highest persistence of any component of the income statement. Therefore, sales are an efficient statistic for describing the characteristics of the firm. The fundamental element of any test for earnings management is a measure of management discretion over earnings. Most studies use DA as a proxy for earnings management. Because DA cannot be observed directly from the financial statement, they have to be estimated using some kind of model. The literature has followed different approaches. According to McNichols (2000), the models can be broadly classified into 3 groups: aggregate accrual models, specific accrual models, and frequency distribution models.   Because of their wide use, we discuss the aggregate accrual models as follows: Models Starting with the first and simplest models, both Healy (1985) and DeAngelo (1986) used total accruals (TA) as the proxy for DA to test earnings management in the context of bonus and management buyouts respectively. However, DeAngelo (1986) used first differencing to correct for serial correlation, therefore his NDA will be less contaminated by past accruals that are irrelevant in estimating current DA. The most popular earnings management model is the Jones Model (1991). It has model has been modified in several ways. Analysis is conducted in 2 stages. In the estimation stage, the DA is assumed to be zero and firm specific coefficients of NDA will be determined. These coefficients are assumed to be stationary and are used to in the event period to determine the DA. In her model, unlike the previous models, NDA are expected to vary with the level of business activity, and revenues and property, plant, and equipment (PPE) are used as proxies to control for NDA. All the variables are deflated by lagged total assets to correct for heteroskedasticity. Dechow et al (1995) argued that earnings can be managed by inflating revenue via receivables. As a result, revenue should be adjusted for change in receivables. This adjusted model is known as the Modified Jones Model. The Modified Jones Model (1995) is: The Industry Model (1991) was developed by Deschow and Sloan when they dealt with RD spending during the last year of the tenure of an outgoing CEO. They assumed that the variation in NDA is common across all firms in the same industry and formulated a model of how the normal item under investigation behaves. However, this model applies only to event studies in which not all firms experience the same event and it cannot capture firm specific characteristics. The Industry Model is: NDA t+1 = ?1 + ? Median (TA t+1) Limitations All models come with limitations. The limitations of the earnings management models are: Strong assumptions that may not hold. These include the absence of earnings management in the estimation period, stationarity of firm specific characteristics over such a longer time horizon, and orthogonality of NDA with the error term (i.e.DA). All the models assume that abnormal accruals are discretionary. Variation in accrual could be the result of performance or business strategy. The consequence is that it produces a Type II error. The solution is to add variables to control for performance and business strategy (Hansen 1999), however, some performance and growth variables may have non-linear properties. Small samples sizes. Small samples generate higher standard error which can weaken the power for the tests (type II errors). Measurement error. Since DA cannot be observed, it has to be estimated. This produces biased estimate of coefficients. The Balance Sheet approach generates more measurement error than the Cash Flow approach. (Hirbar and Collins 2002) Omission of variables. Most models miss some important variables and this induces a bias on the included variables and higher standard errors. The obviously omitted variable is an expense. This can cause an accrual conundrum (Ronen et al, 2007). Efficiency of the existing models. Research has shown that most of these models wrongly identify abnormal but NDA as DA (Type I error) and fail to identify higher amount of induced earnings management (Type II errors). This is partly due to the linearity of the models and the non-linear behavior of the variables studied. Moreover, there are many endogenous factors that affect earnings management and it may not be captured by single equations. As a result, a shift to linear specification and non-linear specification of the models could improve the efficiency of the earnings management models. Further decomposition of accruals. The starting point for most earnings management studies is decomposition of TA and most studies decomposed TA into NDA and DA. However, accruals have reversal property that ensures the change in accrued balance to add up to zero. Therefore, reversal of accrued balance limits the opportunity of managed earnings. As a result, further decomposition of TA accrual could provide more information on the exact change in TA. Implications and Application of Earnings Management Literature related to earnings management implies that earnings management could not be completely eliminated. As long as managements can benefit from managing earnings, they would attempt to expand use of it. Earnings management could be reduced while public eyes such as regulators spend many resources to detect it. However, if they lower guard due to lack of perfect restriction methods, earnings management could be re-flourished since it is surely useful for management to achieve their goals. Therefore, firms earnings management activities continually are reiterated. This continued action without a complete elimination can cause various effects on our society. Firms which purposefully manage their earnings for their own good could negatively impact public well-fare. According to Beaver (1998), financial reporting can generate different kinds of economic consequences, mostly related to resource allocation such as wealth distribution, aggregate consumption and aggregate production, a nd resources devoted to private search for information. Since earnings management could affect the quality of information by producing less reliable financial statement, eventually it could cause various negative economic results. In other words, less reliable information produced because of earnings management may not only make the public worse-off, but may also make the overall economy less stable. For example, because of earnings management, if many investors believe that financial reporting has poor quality and less reliability, they would spend more of their resources to search for better information or private information. It could mean that society wastes resources or re-allocates them to inappropriate places. Several studies provide evidences of earnings management by testing various types of accruals. Teoh, Wong, and Rao (1998) found that depreciation estimates and bad debt provisions are used for earnings management surrounding initial public offers. Many other studies found proof of earnings management through bank loan loss provisions (Beaver, et al., 1989; Moyer, 1990; Scholes, et al., 1990; Wahlen, 1994; Beatty et al. (1995), Collins et al. (1995), Beaver and Engel (1996), Liu and Ryan (1995), Liu et al. (1997). Studies of insurance claim loss reserves, including Petroni (1992), Anthony and Petroni (1992), Beaver and McNichols (1998), Penalva (1998), Petroni et al. (1999), have provided evidence of earnings management among insurers. Visvanathan (1998), Miller and Skinner (1998), Ayers (1998) test the use of deferred tax assets as a tool of earnings management, but they only present little evidence of it. While research indicates evidence of earnings management in a few accruals, numerous studies suggest different methods which could contribute to reduce pervasiveness of earnings management. Such restriction methods could be broadly cauterized in three parts. The first proposed way is to restrict earnings management through the regulatory process. Tan and Jamal (2006) found that strict accounting standards relating to discretionary accruals may reduce earnings management through. However, they also emphasize that too much restriction for cosmetic earnings management could increase real activity earnings management. As such, restriction through regulation would not completely eliminate earnings management because there are trade-offs. Secondly, another method is an appropriate and effective audit procedure. Past studies have shown evidence that various factors related to audit procedure can help constrain earnings management (Krishnan, 2003; Van Caneghem, 2004; Van Caneghem, 2004; Vand er Bauwhede Whillekens, 2004; Kim, et al., 2003; Frankel, 2002; Ferguson, 2004; Carey Simnet, 2006). According to Kim, et al. (2003), Big 5 auditors were more effective in deterring earnings management when there was an income increasing accrual choice. The last suggested restriction method is effective and efficient corporate governance. This is associated with the firms structure. For example, if a firm is inclined to highlight effective corporate governance, this firm could make an effort to prohibit earnings management.   It is important to understand that these three methods correlate with each other. For instance, by requiring additional audit procedures or firm policies, regulation would affect audit procedure or corporate governance and would reduce earnings management. On the other hand, auditors or firms could propose new regulations to reduce earnings management. Hence, earnings management could possibly be reduced not through one method but through a combination of a ll three methods. References: Ayers, B. C. 1998. Deferred tax accounting under SFAS No. 109: An empirical investigation of its incremental value-relevance relative to APB No. 11. The Accounting Review 73 (2): 195-212 Bartov, E., Givoly, D. Hayn, C. (2002) The rewards to meeting or beating earnings expectations.  Journal of Accounting and Economics, 33,173-204 Beatty, A., S. Chamberlain, and J. Magliolo. 1995. Managing financial reports of commercial banks: The influence of taxes, regulatory capital and earnings. Journal of Accounting Research 33 (2): 231-261 Beaver, W., C. Eger, S. Ryan, and M. Wolfson. 1989. Financial reporting, supplemental disclosures and bank share prices. Journal of Accounting Research (Autumn): 157-178 Beaver, W., and E. Engel. 1996. Discretionary behavior with respect to allowances for loan losses and the behavior of security prices. Journal of Accounting and Economics 22: 177-206 Beaver, and M. McNichols. 1998. The characteristics and valuation of loss reserves of property-casualty insurers. Working paper, Stanford University. Burgstahl

Enders Game Essay -- Orson Scott Card

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card When the novel starts Ender Wiggin is a six-year-old genius. He has a brother, Peter, and a sister, Valentine, whom is the only person Ender truly loves. Ender is the third born in the Wiggin family, which is rare, because the limited amount of children per family is two. The government had been running a Battle School in space to train young boys and girls to become military commanders to fight against the buggers, aliens who had invaded Earth in the First and Second Invasions. Peter and Valentine had both been tried out for the Battle School, but Peter was too ruthless and Valentine was too soft towards the enemy. They both failed to go to the Battle school. But, the government wanted Ender. They wanted the death threatening genes that Peter had and the merciful and loving genes that Valentine had. They hoped that Ender would make the perfect military commander. So, The government had Ender born and they put a monitor on the back of his neck to watch his every move to see if he ha d what it took to get into Battle School. The monitor protected Ender from Peter and kids at school because if anything got out of hand the officers would stop it to help Ender. They took the monitor off. Peter and the kids at school could finally get to bully Ender without getting caught. Peter quickly took advantage of the monitor being off to bully Ender around. If it weren’t for his loving sister, Valentine, Peter would have killed Ender. The kids at school had formed at gang to jump Ender after school one day. The leader was a boy named Stilson. They were a little bigger than Ender was and they out-numbered him too. Ender knew they were gonna hurt him and keep hurting him for the rest of the school year, so Ender decided to make this the first and last fight. Ender won the fight by ruthless blows to Stilson when he was down. Afterwards Ender cried for what he had done because he didn’t like hurting people, he didn’t like being Peter. Colonel Graff came back to get Ender. It had turned out they wanted to see how Ender could handle himself without the monitor and he had done it perfectly. Colonel Graff took Ender to Battle School. Graff had isolated him from the other boys in his launch group by stating that Ender was the best of them, so Ender had no choice but to be the best in the group to make them like him. After a while, Ender m... ...ut from the queen’s perspective. He opened and closed his eyes again seeing new images of himself putting the egg into a cool place, a dark place, but with water, so she wasn’t dry so that certain reactions could take place within the egg. Ender realized the queen bugger found him through the ansible followed it and dwelt in my mind. They came to know Ender by his nightmares. Ender picked up the egg and thought to himself that he was going to take the egg from world to world looking for the right place to hatch her so she can awake in safety. Ender picked a spot far from the castle tower for the new colony and wrote a novel from the queen’s perspective stating how sorry she was and that they killed us because they couldn’t communicate and Ender signed after the novel as â€Å"Speaker for the Dead†. He sent the book to earth through the nets and the book was published quietly. After a while almost everyone on earth had read it. Ender began to grow happy on the bugger planet and decided he had lived with pain and suffering all his life he can’t be happy now so he and Valentine boarded a starship and went from planet to planet searching for the right place to hatch the queen bugger.

Don Delillo’s Videotape Essay

The plot of Don Delillo’s Videotape is strange enough as it is; a twelve year old girl is playing with a video camera while in the back seat of their family car. Thinking it is fun to do so, she points the camera out the back window and starts recording the man driving the car behind them. It is not long before the girl and her video camera become witness to the man being fatally shot, and her video becomes widely publicized thereafter. The introduction of the story is with the role of the twelve year old girl in the entire structure of the story. How she gets involved, and the after-effects of her involvement all form the basic concepts and structure of the story. Careful readers will note several complications within the storyline itself that develop surrounding the young girl. The first is her reaction to keep the video camera running even during the actual shooting itself. Being in the process of witnessing a murder in cold blood, the child is faced with the conflict of stopping the recording or satisfying a morbid fascination to continue watching. Ultimately, the child is unable to resist, possibly because of the curiosity that comes with the experience of seeing something new. However, Videotape does not just focus on the child and her story. It tells of the people watching it on television afterwards, specifically of a couple’s reaction to it. In the story, while the wife seems relatively uninterested in the real-life drama going on in the video, the husband displays the same morbid fascination with the murder similar to that earlier demonstrated by the child. The irony of the situation is such that while the idea of seeing the murder of a fellow human being in real life is repulsive enough, seeing it in a different form seems to effectively change the circumstances surrounding it, making it acceptable even. The conclusion of the story ultimately reveals the unfortunate side of man that revels in others’ loss when presented in a manner so usually associated with mass entertainment.

Impact of Advertisements on Consumers Choice Essay

Bovee and Arens (1994) define advertising as the non-personal communication of information, usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature (about products and services) or ideas by identified sponsor through various media. An advertising medium is the means or conveyance by which sales message is carried to prospective customers. Advertising is many things to people. It promotes and affects our daily lives. At times people view it positively that they might find it entertaining while other advertisements are cursed, insults and deceives it. There are also times where advertisements can mislead consumers buying behaviour. Advertisers work on consumer’s attitude to achieve their goal. Influencing and affecting their buying behaviour. Perhaps advertising is the most obvious venue where the concepts of attitude formation change can be seen in application. Persuasive communications (advertisements) can be transmitted through various media print, (newspapers, magazine, books) audio (radio and telephone) audio visual (television and movies) and electronic (internet and e-mail). Consumerism is here to stay. Tomorrows consumers will be better educated, more affluent and more critical. They will probably be less concerned with status and symbols and be more anxious to get information about the product. Background of the Study Most people may not realize it, but advertising has become pervasive if only by the sheer number of advertisement people are exposed to everyday. While advertisements are generally thought as a way to sell things an underlying element can at times be missed. It is that advertising can influence and change people attitudes and can be a potent form of influence. In fact many people blamed advertisements for encouraging materialism on people because advertisers present their products as a â€Å"must have†. Those who acquire them are depicted as more confident or more popular and this gets people to buy more products. The expression that â€Å"today we live in age of advertising† is so common to hear that it has in fact become almost trite so much that the average man has not bothered to pause even briefly and bring to mind the innumerable benefits it bring to society. The rising level in the standard of living would not have been possible in the absence of advertising. For an individual to make effort to examine an advertisement. It should first and foremost capture the individuals attention. According to Fiske (1995), attention involves the process of encoding where by people take information that is outside of them and represent in their heads. It is interesting to know that while watching the favourite shows in T.V., advertisements seem to be a part of it. Sometimes they even consume more hours than the shoe itself. Nowadays, advertisement seems to rule television and radio being a sponsor on shows because of different advertisements being shown the consumers was being confused about what product to select and use because of how the advertisers promote their product. Advertising can influence buying behaviour patterns. There are also some deep rooted attitudes, practices and values that cannot be changed by advertisements. Advertising is claimed to accomplish the four basic task of: informing, persuading, reminding and changing behaviour. Statement of the Problem 1. What are the different forms of medium used by advertisements? 2. What are the factors that affect buying behaviour of the consumers? 3. How can you measure the effectiveness of an advertisement ? 4. What are the level of effectiveness in the following medium? : a. Radio b. Television c. Print ad(newspapers and magazines) 5. What are the attitudes of the following consumers towards different forms of advertisements? : a. Children (8-12) b. Teenagers(13-19) c. Adults (20-onwards) 6. Are there differences in people attitudes towards advertisements considering the following : a. Educational attainment b. Socio- economic status Significance of the Study Everyone will benefit from this study because everyone is considered as a consumer. There is hardly any person who has no personal idea concerning advertising because it is everywhere. Advertisements have become not only a source of entertainment but also of information. These touch our way of life in infinite variety of forms, some subtle, others obvious and there are those that are even blatant.

Free Essays on My Philosophy Of Education

My teaching philosophy is based on a personal belief that the most important thing anyone can accomplish in life is to help others learn how to succeed. The main goal of education is to prepare students for the life ahead of them. I believe social studies in particular is an essential part of the curriculum. It serves as a function to help students understand human relations that occurred in the past, are in many ways occurring now, and will likely take place again. This discernment may help students foster and expand beliefs that will make it more likely that they will be able to determine in any situation what is the best thing to do. In the classroom, I like to think that my methods will combine the best of long-established practices with the best of the new. Some topics must be taught through textbook and lecture. There are also some topics that can be taught more effectively through hands-on or even technological approaches. My students and their interests are my focus when deciding which method to deliver. I want to focus on the learning styles of my students when designing a lesson plan, recognizing that learning styles vary from student to student. Change is a large factor when making lesson plans; what worked last year or for a different class may not necessarily work now. I feel that teachers should constantly continue their own education and stay well-informed with current trends in order to always be adaptable to ever changing classroom settings. My responsibility as a social studies teacher is to imagine and create places of learning. My classroom shall be structured as if it were a community. The structured environment will help students to feel safe and secure. I will mediate as students are able to communicate with each other as well as respect each other?s opinions. An environment with strict rules about behavior, rights, and respect for individual diversity will provide a place where studen... Free Essays on My Philosophy Of Education Free Essays on My Philosophy Of Education My teaching philosophy is based on a personal belief that the most important thing anyone can accomplish in life is to help others learn how to succeed. The main goal of education is to prepare students for the life ahead of them. I believe social studies in particular is an essential part of the curriculum. It serves as a function to help students understand human relations that occurred in the past, are in many ways occurring now, and will likely take place again. This discernment may help students foster and expand beliefs that will make it more likely that they will be able to determine in any situation what is the best thing to do. In the classroom, I like to think that my methods will combine the best of long-established practices with the best of the new. Some topics must be taught through textbook and lecture. There are also some topics that can be taught more effectively through hands-on or even technological approaches. My students and their interests are my focus when deciding which method to deliver. I want to focus on the learning styles of my students when designing a lesson plan, recognizing that learning styles vary from student to student. Change is a large factor when making lesson plans; what worked last year or for a different class may not necessarily work now. I feel that teachers should constantly continue their own education and stay well-informed with current trends in order to always be adaptable to ever changing classroom settings. My responsibility as a social studies teacher is to imagine and create places of learning. My classroom shall be structured as if it were a community. The structured environment will help students to feel safe and secure. I will mediate as students are able to communicate with each other as well as respect each other?s opinions. An environment with strict rules about behavior, rights, and respect for individual diversity will provide a place where studen...