Which electorates receive targeted funding, and does targeted funding swing votes? To answer these questions, I analyze four discretionary programs funded by the Australian federal government during the 2001–2004 election cycle. Controlling for relevant demographic characteristics of the electorate, those electorates held by the governing coalition received a larger share of discretionary fundi...

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to measure the relative efficiency of the fourteen police precincts in Taipei city, Taiwan. Our results indicate how DEA may be used to measure these police precincts from commonly available police statistical data for the years 1994, 1995, and 1996. To sharpen our efficiency estimates, we use window analysis, slack variable analysis, and output-oriented ...

Taking as given the discretionary accruals models that exist in the literature, we examine how the selection of peer firms affects the researcher’s ability to detect earnings management. Researchers commonly estimate accruals models in cross section, and define the peer set (the firms used to estimate the cross section) as all firms in the same industry. We challenge this view by examining whet...

Internal borders are a major but understudied site of crimmigration as most scholarship has focused on external borders (Van der Woude and Van Berlo, 2015). Internal borders were supposed to disappear under the principle of free movement within the European Union. But today we see EU member states policing the borders inside Schengen, checking identification, verifying passage, and regulating m...

n 1992, President Bush proposed legislation intended to speed up the recovery from the 1990-91 recession. Congress rejected this proposal for countercyclical fiscal policy stimulus. In early 1993 President Clinton proposed his own stimulus package, but Congress rejected this proposal too. Many reasons were given for deciding against these two discretionary fiscal policy proposals, but perhaps t...

On June 25, 2013, President Obama announced his plan to introduce carbon dioxide emission standards for electricity generation. This paper proposes an efficiency analysis approach that addresses which emission rates (and standards) would be feasible if the existing generating units adopt best practices. A new efficiency measure is introduced and further decomposed to identify different sources’...

Religiosity and Consequentialist Moral Thinking 2 Three studies demonstrated that the moral judgments of religious individuals and political conservatives are highly insensitive to consequentialist (i.e., outcome-based) considerations. In Study 1, both religiosity and political conservatism predicted a resistance towards consequentialist thinking concerning a range of transgressive acts, indepe...

A large body of accounting research in the past has documented the existence of conservatism and timeliness of income recognition as distinct factors which affect the returns-earnings relation. However, earnings are not the only measure of financial performance that is affected by conservatism. The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of conservatism on accrual measures and drivers, in th...

In this paper, we identify instances in which the auditor-client relationship has been terminated (i.e., the auditor resigns or the client dismisses the auditor) but the auditor continues to complete a subsequent quarterly review. Using discretionary accruals and earnings benchmark tests to proxy for the extent of earnings management, we contrast earnings management behavior during these “lame ...