No abstract

This study examines the empirical relation between a three‐way classification of corporate ownership structure and earnings management through the use of extraordinary item (EI) reporting. The EI reporting decisions examined are those made during 1960‐1966, a time period when US reporting standards allowed considerable management discretion with respect to both the classification of EIs and their placement in the financial statements (i.e., income. versus retained earnings statement). Overall, the results provide strong support for income‐increasing behavior by non‐owner managers. Importantly, the results also suggest that the three‐way ownership classification scheme used in this study is superior to the dichotomous owner‐controlled/managercontrolled classification typically used in accounting studies.

Environmental issues provide a unique, timely, and important focus for an integrated course in accounting and demonstrate how accounting information is, or can be, used to support corporate environmental strategy and assess environmental performance. This type of course offers an opportunity to add value to the educational experience of both accounting and nonaccounting majors. In this article, we describe the development and structure of one such course, discuss our experiences in offering it, and summarize the perceived benefits and difficulties associated with this endeavor. Overall, we conclude that, despite some challenges in designing and offering this type of course, the benefits are significant from both instructional and professional development points of view. Furthermore, the course attempts to achieve several of the objectives laid out a decade ago by the Accounting Education Change Commission (AECC) and more recently, by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) in its forward-looking CPA Vision Project. Perhaps most importantly, this course helps to counter the tendency, by both students and faculty, toward disciplinary insularity, a concern prominently noted by Patten and Williams (1990).

The matched-pairs methodology is becoming increasingly popular as a means of controlling atmnmus factors in business research. This paper develops discriminant procedures for matched data and a a m i n a the properties of thae methods. Data from a recent study by Hunt 1141 on the determinants of inventory method choice are used to contrast the performance of the different methods. While all of the methods yield the same m of discriminating variables. thox procedures that allow for the dependence among observations within a pair provide greater classificatory power than traditional multimriatc techniques. Subject A m Economlc Analysis, Fhmrchl Reporting, L h a v Statistical Mod& and S~rirticul 'Rchniques.