Earnings management in Spain. Some evidence from companies quoted in the Spanish stock exchange

After the accounting scandals that have taken place mainly in the UnitedStates during the last years, some Spanish leading authorities havedefended the idea that this kind of accounting problems cannot happen inSpain. They argue that accounting regulation in Europe, and specificallyin Spain, make more difficult the use of creative accounting practices.The objective of this paper is to identify some evidence about thesituacion in Spain. The study tries to demonstrate that some accountingpractices of several of the companies quoted in the Spanish Stock Exchangecould be qualified as earnings management.To carry out this study, the authors have analysed the accounts of the 35companies included in the stock market index IBEX 35. This index iscalculated with the share prices variations of the most importantcompanies quoted in the Spanish Stock Exchange.

Incentives and pharmaceutical reimbursement reforms in Spain

The aim of this paper is to assess whether cost-containment has beenaffected by recent pharmaceutical reimbursement reforms that have beenintroduced in the Spanish health care system over the period 1996-2002,under the conservative Popular Party government. Four main reimbursementpolicies can be observed in the Spanish pharmaceutical market after1996, each of them largely unintegrated with the other three. First, asecond supplementary negative list of excluded pharmaceutical productswas introduced in 1998. Second, a reference pricing system wasintroduced in December 2000, with annual updating and enlargement.Third, the pharmacies payment system has moved from the traditionalset margin on the consumer price to a margin that varies according tothe consumer price of the product, the generic status of the product,and the volume of sales by pharmacies. And fourth, general agreementsbetween the government and the industry have been reached with costcontainment objectives. In the final section of this paper we presentan overall assessment of the impact of these pharmaceuticalreimbursement policies on the behaviour of the agents in thepharmaceutical market.

Monitoring the university admissions process in Spain

The examinations taken by high-school graduates in Spain and the role ofthe examination in the university admissions process are described. Thefollowing issues arising in the assessment of the process are discussed:reliability of grading, comparability of the grades and scores(equating),maintenance of standards, and compilation and use of the grading process,and their integration in the operational grading are proposed. Variousschemes for score adjustment are reviewed and feasibility of theirimplementation discussed. The advantages of pretesting of items and ofempirical checks of experts' judgements are pointed out. The paperconcludes with an outline of a planned reorganisation of the highereducation in Spain, and with a call for a comprehensive programme ofempirical research concurrent with the operation of the examination andscoring system.

The impact of Economics on health policy and management in Spain

BackgroundDespite the intrinsic value of scientific disciplines, such as Economics, it is appropriate to gauge the impact of its applications on social welfare, or at least Health Economics (HE) case- its influence on health policy and management.MethodsThe three relevant features of knowledge (production, diffusion and application) are analyzed, more from an emic perspective the one used in Anthropology relying on the experience of the members of a culture- than from an etic approach seated on material descriptions and dubious statistics.ResultsThe soundness of the principles and results of HE depends on its disciplinary foundations,whereas its relevance than does not imply translation into practice- is more linked with the problems studied. Important contributions from Economics to the health sphere are recorded.HE in Spain ranks seventh in the world despite the relatively minor HE contents of its clinical and health services research journals.HE has in Spain more presence than influence, having failed to impregnate sufficiently thedaily events.ConclusionsHE knowledge required by a politician, a health manager or a clinician is rather limited; the main impact of HE could be to develop their intuition and awareness.

The evolution of inequity in the access to health care in Spain: 1987-2001

This paper reports an analysis of the evolution of equity in access to health care in Spain over the period 1987-2001, a time span covering the development of the modern Spanish National Health System. Our measures of access are the probabilities of visiting a doctor, using emergency services and being hospitalised. For these three measures we obtain indices of horizontal inequity from microeconometric models of utilization that exploit the individual information in the Spanish National Health Surveys of 1987 and 2001. We find that by 2001 the system has improved in the sense that differences in income no longer lead to different access given the same level of need. However, the tenure of private health insurance leads to differences in access given the same level of need, and its contribution to inequity has increased over time, both because insurance is more concentrated among the rich and because the elasticity of utilization for the three services has increased too.

Unemployment duration and workers' wage aspirations in Spain

This paper examines unemployed workers' declared willingness to work for a wage lower than the one warranted by their qualification. We analyze which personal and economic characteristics determine thiswillingness and how it changes as unemployment spells lengthen. Moreover, we also study the influence of this willingness on unemployment duration. The main results are: (i) Young workers, those less educated and those living in regions with high unemployment show a more positive attitude towards accepting lower wages while married women with a working husband show more negative attitudes; (ii) The exhaustion of unemployment benefits has positive effects in the transition probability of the attitude from negative to positive; (iii) The effect of this attitude on the unemployment hazard rate is positive but only marginally significant which may be showing that this willingness is not only reflecting the worker's reservation wage but also some unobserved heterogeneity; (iv) The negative duration dependence of the unemployment hazard rate is substantially reduced when unobserved heterogeneity is controlled for.

Manipulation of earnings reports in Spain - some evidence

Accounting regulation is a highly topical issue for listed companies in Europe. From 1 January 2005 all companies listed in the EU member states are required to produce financial reports compliant with international accounting standards. Financial reports will be comparable with each other only if full compliance with the international standards can be ensured. Historically, however, an enduring weakness of the international standard-setting regime has been its inability to enforce compliance with its standards. There is a danger that implementation and compliance will be variable across the adopting countries, and that deeply ingrained national reporting practices will persist. The purpose of this paper is to examine some distinctive elements of Spanish financial reporting practices. Spanish financial reporting by major companies demonstrates a tendency towards quite overt manipulation of the earnings figures. The research reported in the paper firstly identifies four common earnings manipulation practices, and then proceeds to examine their incidence in the financial statements of the IBEX-35 companies over a three year period.

IFRS introduction and its effect on listed companies in Spain

From the beginning of January 2005 publicly traded companies in the European Union have to comply with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for their consolidated accounts, as required by 1606/2002 European Commission Regulation. It had been suggested that the new accounting rules will facilitate not only the process of international harmonization of financial statements, but also efficient performance of financial markets and capital flows worldwide. This study analyzes the first results of IFRS implementation by Spanish non-financial listed companies.

Management control in non-profit organizations: The case of the Associations of Economists in Spain

The number of non-profit organizations has grown considerably over thelast decades, however management control techniques are not being introducedwith the same frequency as in lucrative organizations. The increasedcompetition in this sector has created a growing interest in managementcontrol techniques but with little empirical research in the area. Withthe aim to throw some light over the uses of management control inprofessional associations we have focused in the associations foreconomists in Spain as a particular case of a non-lucrative body.Specifically, the paper comprises three surveys addressed to the followingsectors:1) To the 30 Spanish associations of economists.2) To associations related to the business and/or economics area operatingin the United Kingdom.3) To members of the association of economists in Catalonia (Col.legid'Economistes de Catalunya).Results indicate that management accounting tools are used exceptionally,many times only the minimum legal requirements. The critical situation ofthe associations of economists in Spain requires the implementation ofinformation systems, specially taking into account the differentspecialities of economists and offering to its members, services and productsthat are not available through profit organizations.

Informal care and labour force participation among middle-aged women in Spain

Informal care is today the form of support most commonly used by those who need other peoplein order to carry out certain activities that are considered basic (eating, dressing, taking a shower,etc.), in Spain and in most other countries in the region. The possible labour opportunity costsincurred by these informal carers, the vast majority of whom are middle-aged women, have not asyet been properly quantified in Spain. It is, however, crucially important to know these quantities ata time when public authorities appear to be determined to extend the coverage offered up to nowas regards long-term care.In this context, we use the Spanish subsample of the European Community Household Panel (1994-2001) to estimate a dynamic ordered probit and so attempt to examine the effects of various typesof informal care on labour behaviour. The results obtained indicate the existence of labouropportunity costs for those women who live with the dependent person they care for, but not forthose who care for someone outside the household. Furthermore, whereas caregiving for morethan a year has negative effects on labour force participation, the same cannot be said of those who start caregiving and stop caregiving .

Regional differences in socio-economic health inequalities in Spain

This paper reports an analysis of income related health inequalities at the AutonomousCommunity level in Spain using the self assessed health measure in the 2001 edition of theEncuesta Nacional de Salud. We use recently developed methods in order to cardinalise andmodel self assessed health within a regression framework, decompose the sources ofinequality and explain the observed differences across regions. We find that the regions with the highest levels of mean health tend to enjoy the lowest degrees of income related health inequality and vice-versa. The main feature characterizing regions where income related health inequality is low is the absence of a positive gradient between income and health. In turn, the regions where income related health inequality is greater are characterized by a strong and significant positive gradient between health and income. These results suggest that policies aimed at eliminating the gradient between health and income can potentially lead to greate r reductions in socio-economic health inequalities than policies aimed at redistributing income.

Strike outcomes and wage settlements in Spain

This paper analyzes collective bargaining using Spanish firm level data. Centralto the analysis are the joint determination of wage and strike outcomes in adynamic framework and the possibility of segregate wage equation for strike andnon-strike outcomes. Conditional to strikes taking place, we confirm a negativerelationship between strike duration and wage changes in a dynamic context.Furthermore, we find selection in wage equations induced by the strike outcome.In this sense, the possibility of wage determination processes being differentin strike and non-strike samples is not rejected by the data. In particular,wage dynamics are of opposite sing in both strike and non-strike equations.Finally, we find evidence of a 0.33 percentage points wage change strike premium.

The situation of open access institutional repositories in Spain: 2009 report

Introduction. The DRIVER I project drew up a detailed report of European repositories based on data gathered in a survey in which Spain's participation was very low. This created a highly distorted image of the implementation of repositories in Spain. This study aims to analyse the current state of Spanish open-access institutional repositories and to describe their characteristics. Method. The data were gathered through a Web survey. The questionnaire was based on that used by DRIVER I: coverage; technical infrastructure and technical issues; institutional policies; services created; and stimulators and inhibitors for establishing, filling and maintaining their digital institutional repositories. Analysis. Data were tabulated and analysed systematically according responses obtained from the questionnaire and grouped by coverage. Results. Responses were obtained from 38 of the 104 institutions contacted, which had 29 institutional repositories. This represents 78.3% of the Spanish repositories according to the BuscaRepositorios directory. Spanish repositories contained mainly full-text materials (journal articles and doctoral theses) together with metadata. The software most used was DSpace, followed by EPrints. The metadata standard most used was Dublin Core. Spanish repositories offered more usage statistics and fewer author-oriented services than the European average. The priorities for the future development of the repositories are the need for clear policies on access to scientific production based on public funding and the need for quality control indicators. Conclusions.This is the first detailed study of Spanish institutional repositories. The key stimulants for establishing, filling and maintaining were, in order of importance, the increase of visibility and citation, the interest of decision-makers, simplicity of use and search services. On the other hand the main inhibitors identified were the absence of policies, the lack of integration with other national and international systems and the lack of awareness efforts among academia.

Foreign migrations and new couples in Spain. Nuptiality and Gender Imbalance in the new century

Nuptiality is not a central item in Migration Research now. In the past, especially for American countries, many scholars were really interested in marriages of immigrants, specially knowing the exchanges between different communities; that is, mixed marriages. Here is the Spanish case in nuptiality between foreign and local people.