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on Accounting and Auditing |
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Issue of 2020‒05‒04
three papers chosen by |
| By: | Luigi Infante (Bank of Italy); Francesco Vercelli (Bank of Italy) |
| Abstract: | Balance sheet statistics are included in the national accounts system and provide a complete framework for analysing the wealth of a nation and its evolution over time. The paper presents Italian balance sheets, compiled using data on financial accounts produced by the Bank of Italy and non-financial asset data calculated by Istat, the Italian National Institute of Statistics. We provide stylized facts on the comparison between Italy and other major economies, taking into account the statistical comparability limits on non-financial assets across countries. In Italy, the ratio of non-financial assets to gross wealth increased from 43 to 47 per cent between 2005 and 2008 because of the dynamics of housing prices. It then gradually decreased from 2012, reaching 41 per cent at the end of 2017. The net wealth of Italian households far outweighs the negative values reported in the public sector. The ratio of net wealth to income is high in Italy compared with other countries; nevertheless, the gap has narrowed over the last decade. |
| Keywords: | Balance sheet statistics, sector wealth |
| JEL: | E01 E21 E22 |
| Date: | 2020–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_559_20&r=all |
| By: | Vitolla, Filippo; Raimo, Nicola; Rubino, Michele |
| Abstract: | In recent years, the analysis of corporate governance aspects is becoming a central element for understanding corporate dynamics and represents a clear indicator of investor confidence in the decisions taken by the management and board of listed firms. For this reason, corporate governance disclosure is receiving more and more attention from both a professional and academic point of view. The advent of integrated reporting represents a new tool for disclosing information relating to corporate governance. The goal of this study is to investigate the factors that can influence the level of corporate governance disclosure within the integrated reports. The analysis, conducted on a sample of 73 international firms, shows a positive effect of the firm size, firm profitability and audit quality. To our knowledge, this is the first study that analyses corporate governance disclosure level in the integrated reporting context |
| Keywords: | corporate governance,disclosure,integrated reporting,information quality |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esconf:215826&r=all |
| By: | Lasse Eika; Magne Mogstad; Ola L. Vestad (Statistics Norway) |
| Abstract: | A major difficulty faced by researchers who want to study the consumption and savings behavior of households is the lack of reliable panel data on household expenditures. One possibility is to use surveys that follow the same households over time, but such data are rare and they typically have small sample sizes and face significant measurement issues. An alternative approach is to use the accounting identity that total household spending is equal to income plus capital gains minus the change in wealth over the period. The goal of this paper is to examine the advantages and difficulties of using this accounting identity to construct a population panel data with information on household expenditure. To derive such measures of consumption expenditure, we combine several data sources from Norway over the period 1994–2014. This allows us to link tax records on income and wealth to other administrative data with information on financial and real estate transactions. Using this data, we derive household expenditure from the accounting identity, before assessing the sensitivity of this measure of consumption expenditure to the assumptions made and the data used. We then compare our measures of household expenditure to those reported in expenditure surveys and to the aggregates from national accounts. We also illustrate the research opportunities arising from the derived measures of consumption expenditure through two applications: the first is an examination of how relative wage movements among birth cohorts and education groups affected the distribution of household expenditure, while the second is a study of the transmission of income shocks to household consumption. |
| Keywords: | administrative data; consumption measurement; income; wealth |
| JEL: | C81 D12 D14 D31 D91 E21 G11 |
| Date: | 2020–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ssb:dispap:923&r=all |