Assurance Market Research Articles

Understanding and Contributing to the Enigma of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Assurance in the United States

SUMMARY This paper provides an empirical examination of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) assurance market in the United States. Various constituencies have found this market puzzling, as the level of assurance significantly lags international levels (Simnett et al. 2009; KPMG 2011). Results shed light on this enigma by demonstrating that, unlike their international counterparts, U.S. finance and utilities firms are not more likely (than firms in other industries) to obtain CSR assurance despite facing significant social and environmental risks. As these industries are highly regulated in the United States, regulatory oversight may be acting as a substitute for CSR assurance. We also find that highly leveraged firms are less likely to obtain CSR assurance, potentially due to stringent bank monitoring indirectly suppressing demand. Nonetheless, examining the capital market responses to CSR assurance makes the low demand even more puzzling. Specifically, CSR assurance is associated with lower cost of equity capital along with lower analyst forecast errors and dispersion. Furthermore, the reductions in cost-of-capital and forecast dispersion are significantly higher when CSR assurance is provided by an accounting firm. These results have implications for companies that are considering CSR assurance and accounting firms in developing and marketing their CSR assurance services.

Marketing scenario and problems of mushroom growing in Punjab

Punjab state is known for its contribution to central pool in the production of rice and wheat grains. Various studies show the stagnation in productivity of these crops resulting decline in the returns. To augment their income some of the farmers adopted mushroom growing as subsidiary occupation of farming. The present study was undertaken in Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts of Punjab by taking a sample of 80 mushroom growers. The analysis brought out that Also, to examine the marketing structure of mushrooms, equal number of wholesalers and retailers were randomly selected from Amritsar and Gurdaspur markets. Mushroom growers were divided into three categories on the basis of bed area spawned using cumulative cube root frequency method. Marketed surplus of mushroom was about 99 per cent with meager family consumption, quantity given to labour as kind payment and to relatives. Marketing pattern revealed that the net price received by the growers was highest in producer → consumer channel while the marketing agency through which major chunk of produce transected was wholesaler. The production and marketing problems faced by mushroom growers were inadequate and poor quality of spawn, lack of assured market, price fluctuation, lack of canning and processing units and refrigerated storage. The study emphasized the need of canning and refrigeration facility for mushroom growers in case of higher production to stop distress sale and creating awareness among masses about nutritional importance of mushrooms to increase its consumption.

Sustainable Development and Assurance of Corporate Social Responsibility Reports Published by Ibex‐35 Companies

ABSTRACTSpain is the world's leading country as regards corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting (KPMG, 2011). In addition, Spain is taking new initiatives with regard to environmental policy, sustainable development, and stakeholder engagement in accordance with Law 2/2011.This is why we choose Spain as the setting to analyze whether the determinants for external assurance posited by existing literature (industry, size, profitability, leverage) have an impact on the decision of companies to assure their CSR reports. Our study is a pioneer in the sense that it investigates the possible links between the auditor of the annual report and the provider of assurance. The results of this study indicate that assurance of CSR reporting depends on the size, leverage, and profitability of the company. We find that the sustainability assurance market is dominated by the Big‐4 firms, who develop different strategies in this field. Finally, we find that the decision to hire an auditor to perform sustainability assurance sometimes depends on the industry. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Why Did the US Market for Mortgage Backed Securities Unravel?

This paper presents a study of the role of the rating agencies during the 2008 financial crisis in the US. The rating agencies are embedded in an assurance market as knowers; that is, as active searchers or creators of information on the quality of mortgage backed securities (MBS). This market was characterized by: (a) legal barriers to entry in the bond rating industry; (b) the legal tender category of the ratings provided by the oligopolistic bond raters; and (c) the even letter grades across financial assets with different risks. Hence, a 'Gresham law' type of argument is applied to explain the unraveling of the MBS. In short, these assets were not flawed but debauched. This explanation does not rest upon other more popular views such as rating shopping or the complicatedness of the assets.

The Decision to Assure and Assurance Provider Choice: Evidence from the GHG Assurance Market

The need for credible emissions reporting has created international demand for a new and specific type of assurance engagement: assurance of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions information. This study provides an examination of the international GHG assurance market to identify key potential determinants of both the decision to assure and the choice of assurance provider. As well as providing details on this new assurance service, we extend current knowledge by undertaking a multi-level analysis of both country-level (stakeholder orientation and strength of legal system) and company-level (corporate governance) variables. After correcting for potential self-selection bias, our results reveal significant variations in country patterns for both of these decisions, with both the demand for GHG assurance services and the preference for an accounting profession assurance provider found to be higher in countries with a stakeholder-orientation and a less stringent legal enforcement system. Further, we find company-level corporate governance systems and processes to be a significant moderator of the country-level factors for both decisions.

EXPERIENCES IN LINKING SMALLHOLDER VEGETABLE FARMERS TO THE EMERGING INSTITUTIONAL MARKET IN THE PHILIPPINES

ISHS XXVIII International Horticultural Congress on Science and Horticulture for People (IHC2010): International Symposium on Horticulture for Development EXPERIENCES IN LINKING SMALLHOLDER VEGETABLE FARMERS TO THE EMERGING INSTITUTIONAL MARKET IN THE PHILIPPINES

The Competitive Market for Assurance Engagements on Greenhouse Gas Statements: Is There a Role for Assurers from the Accounting Profession?

SUMMARYIn response to current and increasing demand for assurance on greenhouse gas statements, the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) released an exposure draft of a new assurance standard, ISAE 3410 “Assurance on a Greenhouse Gas Statement” (IFAC 2011), to provide comprehensive guidance on these types of greenhouse gas (GHG) assurance engagements. Internationally, approximately 50 percent of GHG statements are independently assured. The related assurance market is competitive, with the accounting profession and those outside the profession currently holding approximately equal shares. This paper highlights the characteristics of GHG assurance engagements that warrant multi-disciplinary teamwork, the unique and interdependent skill-sets that different practitioners bring to these engagements, and the market forces that create a demand for diverse providers.

"As Melancholy as a Sick Parrot": Depressed(?) Women at the Beginning of the Long Eighteenth Century

Lord, Madam, you are as melancholy as a sick Parrot, Jacinta chides her mistress Julia at the opening of a scene in Aphra Behn's 1681 play The False Count: Or, a New Way to Play an Old Game (2.1.1). The goal of this essay is to begin to establish, through a discussion of accounts written by women about the experience of melancholy, what could have been meant by this somewhat startling ejaculation. The picture that will emerge is not a neat one. In the late 1600s there were various, sometimes explicitly competing, models that were used to define or prescribe for melancholy. (1) And while at times the symptoms described sound very like modern depression, sometimes the combination of features serves as a firm warning of the need not to indulge in retrospective diagnosis by assuming that we can easily assimilate what emerges into a history of depression. The texts are, though, fascinating, and certainly deserve and require further exploration in any endeavor to understand what existed before depression. A key place to start when exploring how women's melancholy might have been understood at the beginning of the long eighteenth century is with midwifery manuals. Unlike their continental cousins in France, Germany and the Netherlands, where state training and registration of midwives produced an assured market for books on pregnancy and childbirth, British midwifery manuals were addressed at least as much to a general reader and provide plentiful evidence of the kind of ideas that were commonly repeated. (2) Jane Sharps The Midwives Book is particularly helpful when seeking to establish how women might have understood melancholy: Sharp compiled her book from several other popular texts, cutting and revising her male-authored sources when her own perspective differed from theirs, and presenting herself on her title page as an expert, a Practitioner in the Art of Midwifry above thirty years. (3) Sharps first substantial discussion of melancholy occurs in the section of her book dedicated to explaining What must be done after the woman is delivered. She recommends the use of a sheepskin or hate's skirl to warm the mother's abdomen, hours in winter, and but one hour in Summer, so as to expel all melancholly blood from those parts (162). The instructions continue: Let her not sleep till about four hours after she is delivered, but first give her some nourishing broth or Cawdle to comfort her; let her eat no flesh till two dayes at least be over, for she may not use a full diet after so great loss of blood suddenly, as she grows stronger she may begin with meats of easie digestion, as Chickens, or Pullets; ... Let her drink her Beer or Ale with a tost, she may drink a decoction of Liquorish, Raisins of the Sun and a little Cinnamon: if the child be a boy she must lye in thirty dayes, if a girl forty daies, and remember that it is the time of her purification that her husband must abstain from her. (163) Fundamental to Sharp's prescriptions here are the essential tenets of humoral theory: ill-health is caused by a disturbance in the body's natural balance or complexion through an excess of choler, melancholy (also known as black choler), or phlegm. A return to health is achieved through attention to six features known (confusingly to the modern reader) as non-naturals: air, food and drink, sleep and waking, motion and rest, excretion and retention (including sexual activity), and the passions of the soul (emotions) (Wear 156). The chief danger after childbirth, Sharp indicates, is an accumulation of ill melancholly blood, and this is addressed through controlling the mother's diet, sleep, rest, and sexual relations with her husband, while her body performs the normal excretion of postpartum bleeding (her purification). Without such efforts, women might be overcome by the cold, dry humor that predominates in ill melancholly blood. It is not only in the aftermath of childbirth, however, that women are at risk of such an excess of melancholy. …

Strategic Management of Innovation Focusing on Confluence of Continuity and Change

Production of world-class products and services amidst inevitable changes in business situations calls for a continual balance across current and future areas of focus. While innovation is accepted as an imperative, managing innovation effectively now, more than ever before, calls for a dynamic strategy to manage the resultant diverse forces that are in play at any point of time. The continuity forces, represented largely by elements denoting stability, such as an assured market base, access to technological and financial resources and availability of human capital, need to be balanced constantly versus change forces, represented by agents such as technology changes, environment changes and customer preferences. Literature survey indicates that successful organizations have demonstrated capabilities in adopting effective strategies to meet these different conditions. The attempt is to present the patterns and trends of research on both continuity and change management aspects, particularly in the context of management of innovation. While it has been possible to highlight only some of the exemplary work, the paper identifies significant gaps in research in this context and suggests a practical framework to address this issue.

Are Greenhouse Gas Assurance Engagements a Natural Domain of the Auditing Profession?

Informed by stakeholder responses to the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board’s (IAASB) Consultation Paper on their draft international standard for assurance on greenhouse gas (GHG) statements, this paper explores the question of whether GHG assurance engagements are a natural domain of the auditing and assurance profession. It is argued that there will be scope in the GHG assurance market for services led by different professionals depending on the nature of the engagement and clients’ cost-benefit analyses. Potential responses to the issues raised in the Consultation Process with regards the engagement partner, engagement teams and the use of the IAASB’s standards by parties other than professional accountants are also canvassed.

Fabricating the Market: The Promotion of Life Assurance in the Long Nineteenth‐Century

AbstractThe market for life assurance did not emerge “naturally” from a particular problem of the allocation of resources, it had to be made. Life insurance had to appear desirable and reliable. This involved the circulation of a variety of advertising media, one aspect of which was the fabrication of grand offices as headquarters for life assurance companies. These buildings and their widely‐circulated images were part of a process of making life assurance appear prudent and proper, but more importantly secure. Through this fabrication of the liberal market, the City of London was transformed into a centre of commerce and finance.

The exploration of future tendencies of the Lithuanian life insurance market

The objective of the research: The article treats the development tendencies of the Lithuanian life insurance market and evaluates its actual perspectives as compared to the markets of other European Union countries.The subjective of the research: The tendencies of the Lithuanian life insurance market development and its perspectives in the European context.Research methods: The analysis of the life insurance market embodies the arranged, systemized and carefully analyzed empirical data. The research uses the primal statistical data of the Lithuanian life assurance market collected and generalized by the Lithuanian Life Assurers Association and the Insurance Supervisory Commission of the Republic of Lithuania, and the statistical data of the Department of Statistics to the Government of the Republic of Lithuania concerning Lithuanian macroeconomics indexes. Some notices and assertions are circumstantial to the personal experience of the author.

Assurance on Sustainability Reports: An International Comparison

ABSTRACT: Globally, companies increasingly publish separate general purpose, nonfinancial (sustainability) reports. Some of these are independently assured and assurers may or may not be from the auditing profession. We seek to understand this emerging voluntary assurance market. Using a sample of 2,113 companies (from 31 countries) that produced sustainability reports between 2002–2004, we use sequential logit analysis to identify the factors associated with the decision to voluntarily purchase assurance and the choice of assurance provider. We hypothesize that a company's need to enhance credibility through assurance and choice of assurance provider will be a function of company-, industry-, and country-related factors. Our results support the argument that companies seeking to enhance the credibility of their reports and build their corporate reputation are more likely to have their sustainability reports assured, although it does not matter whether the assurance provider comes from the auditing profession. We also find that companies operating in stakeholder-orientated countries are more likely to choose the auditing profession as an assurer.

Complex services and choice criteria: an example from the life assurance market

This study analyses customer choice criteria in the context of a complex service, more specifically, endowment life assurance policies. The study draws upon previous literature which has suggested that service complexity may have implications for consumer behaviour in general and customer choice criteria in particular. A quantitative study is employed to investigate the relative importance of choice criteria in endowments and differences in importance with respect to various demographic and related factors. Findings indicate that the consumer's choice of institution is most often influenced by use of an existing service with that firm, followed closely by choosing on the basis of recommendation or family relationship. Factors such as performance and charges are shown to be relatively unimportant choice criteria. In addition, differences in the importance of choice criteria with respect to gender, class, household income, educational attainment, age and financial maturity are apparent.

Food for Thought: Improving the Market for Assurance

Better information can improve a marketplace. An evaluation/certification process that leveraged modern programming languages and analytic tools could accelerate both the development and the adoption of less vulnerable and more effective programming practices, products, and systems. *This article also includes a letter to the editor, regarding Alien vs. Quine by Vanessa Gratzer and David Naccache from the March/April 2007 issue.

Why are there not more herbicide‐tolerant crops?

Herbicide-tolerant (HT) varieties of corn, soybean, canola (oilseed rape) and cotton have been grown since the mid-1990s, and have been widely adopted by farmers in several countries. HT genes have been inserted into or selected for in many other species, including almost all major crop species in the world and many minor crops and ornamental species. In some cases this has been done specifically to introduce the HT trait, whereas in others the HT gene has been used as a selectable marker (eg the bar gene, conferring glufosinate-ammonium tolerance). However, in very few cases have the HT crops generated been commercialized, despite the weed-control advantages that many such crops would offer. There are several reasons for this, including the high research and development costs associated with developing the new HT crop cultivars, the high cost of obtaining regulatory clearance for the HT crops or products derived from them, international trade issues relating to genetically modified crops, and issues surrounding the expanded herbicide registration for the new use and the potential impact of this on the existing registration status of the herbicide. New HT crops are unlikely to be developed unless they offer a sufficiently large advantage to farmers and a substantial assured market to justify the associated development and regulatory costs.

The quality assurance system and market forces in Japanese higher education

This article analyzes thedevelopment of the quality assurance system andchanges in market forces in higher education inJapan. First, the article focuses on thefunction and impact of self-monitoring andself-evaluation systems as unique processesoriented towards decentralization and internalreflection. Second, the changes in marketforces in higher education during rapideconomic globalization are discussed. Third,the possibility of external evaluation by theNational Institution for Academic Degrees isintroduced as a bureaucratic approach to showaccountability in the national universitysystem. Finally, the relationship between thechanges in the quality assurance system and thechanges in market forces is addressed.

Research highlights major untapped market for quality assurance and quality control industry

Research highlights major untapped market for quality assurance and quality control industry

Investigating the benefits of mutuality: Mutual versus proprietary annuity provision

The paper is concerned with annuities research and retirement income provision. This is an important area of research in the UK, as annuity instruments lie at the heart of any post-retirement income scheme. The paper examines the structural differences across the provider market for pension annuities — financial instruments typically exchanged for accrued pension wealth to provide an income stream for life. The financial services industry is probably unique in having a substantial mutual sector coexisting with, and competing against, joint stock companies. Specifically in this paper, we undertake an empirical examination of the differences observable across UK annuity rates, between the mainstream mutual and Plc providers over the period 1994–2001. This time frame has encompassed a wholesale transformation of the UK life assurance market, as the majority of mutual assurance providers have elected to change corporate form through the process of demutualisation. This trend towards wholesale proprietary structures has concurred with a general consolidation across the financial services industry. The paper examines these changes from an annuitant's perspective and shows that mutuality appears to have served policyholders well, as demonstrated by improved annuity rate offerings across a spectrum of standardised annuity products.

Assurance Services for Business-to- Business Electronic Commerce: A Framework and Implications

The electronic commerce assurance market has been estimated to be potentially worth $11 billion. To date the focus of assurance services has largely been on web commerce (and therefore business to consumer) related services, leaving the business-to-business (B2B or B-to-B) electronic commerce market relatively untapped. Yet, with Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) being mandated by large companies and government agencies, small- to medium-sized firms have struggled to acquire and implement this technology with little understanding of this new age of electronic commerce. As the ubiquitous Internet allows more firms to become EDI-capable, there is an imminent need for having some independent means for assuring the quality of B2B electronic commerce and related business practices. This need is not only crucial for smaller trading partners, but is essential to the success of larger firms who want to realize reduced cycle times, improved customer service and a greater return on their technology investments by electronically controlling the entire value-chain. This paper proposes a framework for delivering B2B electronic commerce assurance services and discusses some potential implications for such services.