The value of audit quality in public and private companies: evidence from Spain

This paper compares the value of audit quality, proxied by the selection of a big N auditor, to the external claimholders of private and public companies. Although the combination of a lower ownership concentration of public companies, the greater demand for financial information quality about these companies and their higher litigation risk can result in the expectation that audit quality should be more valuable for public than for private companies, the greater information asymmetry between the managers and the external stakeholders and the unavailability of alternative mechanisms for monitoring the managers can make external audit more valuable for the external claimholders of private companies. In this paper, we test these two competing views by analysing if banks and lenders take into account auditor selection in the formation of the cost of debt. Our results support the second view: we find that only private companies obtain a lower cost of debt when they are audited by a high-quality auditor. These results are robust to both endogeneity and unobserved firm-specific heterogeneity.     

Characterization of discrete distributions using expected values

In this paper we study characterization problems for discrete distributions using the doubly truncated mean function m(xy)=E(h(X)|x≤X≤y), for a monotonic function h(x). We obtain the distribution function F(x) from m(x,y) and we give the necessary and sufficient conditions for any real function to be the doubly truncated mean function for a discrete distribution.     

Characterizations of discrete distributions based on conditional expectations of record values

r -th record values subject to (r + 1)-th record values, record mean function, from a distribution of discrete type. We give some properties of the record mean function and an explicit expression for the distribution function based on its record mean function, which allows us to characterize particular discrete distributions using the record mean functions. Received: January 4, 1999; revised version: September 27, 1999     

Educating Administrators to Interact with Citizens: A Research Note

This article examines the place of citizen participation courses in American Masters of Public Administration programs. A survey of course syllabi shows that very few programs provide courses that focus on citizen participation. While the evidence on course content is more ambiguous, course goals tend to focus on imparting cognitive knowledge rather than developing skills or engendering psychological transformation—outcomes that may be key to having administrators who are comfortable working with citizens. An argument is made for a more visible place for citizen-participation courses to show that the ability to involve citizens is part of administrative competence.     

Corporate and managerial characteristics as drivers of social responsibility disclosure by state-owned enterprises

The public administration sector, including state owned enterprises (SOEs), has developed various types of information disclosure practice, in response to stakeholders’ demands, in parallel with developments in the private sector. This paper analyses the corporate social responsibility (CSR) information disclosed by SOEs and the influence exerted by the characteristics of the SOEs themselves (size, industry sector, degree of government ownership and number of years in operation) and by those of their managers (age, gender, CSR education profile and CSR responsibilities in the workplace). To do so, an index of CSR information disclosure was created, based on the responses made to a questionnaire in this respect. An empirical regression model was then applied to test and categorise the factors analysed. According to the results obtained, the size and sector of the SOE, together with the manager’s CSR responsibilities, are the factors that most significantly affect the online disclosure of CSR information.     

Learning about migration decisions from the migrants: Using complementary datasets to model intra-regional migrations in Spain

We investigate the determinants of the remarkable increase in intra-regional migrations since the 1980's in Spain, using a large administrative micro dataset on migrants. Conditional migration probabilities are identified by comparing the migrants' joint distribution of characteristics to the corresponding distribution from the Spanish Labour Force Survey. The proportion of employment in the service industry, unemployment, house prices and education, all have an important positive effect on the individual probabilities of intra-regional migration. Received: 16 May 1999/Accepted: 26 September 2000     

Broadcasting standardisation: An analysis of the linguistic normalisation process in Murcian Spanish

The samples used from radio programme recordings have been demonstrated to be very useful sources for the study of styles and the analysis of linguistic variation and change. The aim of this paper is to show the results of a longitudinal study of Murcian speech carried out following a real-time approach with a retrospective trend design in order to detect and measure the apparent increasing diffusion of standard Castilian features from northern Peninsular Spanish over Murcian Spanish, a traditionally non-standard region. For this purpose, following the methodology used in similar studies, we focussed on the quantification of the level of standardisation of people interviewed in radio broadcasts in the last twenty-six years. In this way, the correlation of linguistic variables with social variables (groups) and time intervals, allowed us to compare and analyse the sociolinguistic behaviour of the different social groups in terms of standardisation (adoption of Castilian Spanish features) or non-standardisation (maintenance of local Murcian features) and trends.     

The Trade Liberalization Evaluation (TLE) Methodology

This research paper proposes a new trade analysis model to evaluate the trend and stages of trade liberalization of any country. This new trade analysis model is entitled “The Trade Liberalization Evaluation (TLE) Methodology.” The TLE Methodology will introduce new indexes and graphs.There are four basic phases in the implementation of TLE Methodology. The first phase is the design of the multi-input tariff database table by production sector (agriculture, heavy industry,¹ light industry² and services). The second is the measuring of the Trade Liberalization Index by Production Sector (Xi), it is divided by the Agriculture Trade Liberalization Index (X1), Heavy Industry Trade Liberalization Index (X2), Light Industry Trade Liberalization Index (X3), and Services Trade Liberalization Index (X4). The third phase is the measurement of the Area of Coverage of the Trade Liberalization (ACTL) index. The last phase is the measuring of the Trade Liberalization Stage (LTS) index.The general objective of TLE Methodology is to offer policy-makers and researchers a new analytical tool to study the trade liberalization trend and stages of any country from a global perspective—based on a group of indexes and graphs. The TLE Methodology is not intended to be a forecasting model in any case. However, its application is not limited to the study of a special group of countries or regions. It is not constrained by issues about the region or the development stages of any country in a region that is interested in integrating into a Free Trade Area. TLE Methodology, in effect, is a simple and flexible scheme, which can be applied to any case of trade liberalization.