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Conservatism
Kinds of Conservatism Selected AbstractsENVIRONMENTAL NICHE EQUIVALENCY VERSUS CONSERVATISM: QUANTITATIVE APPROACHES TO NICHE EVOLUTIONEVOLUTION, Issue 11 2008Dan L. Warren Environmental niche models, which are generated by combining species occurrence data with environmental GIS data layers, are increasingly used to answer fundamental questions about niche evolution, speciation, and the accumulation of ecological diversity within clades. The question of whether environmental niches are conserved over evolutionary time scales has attracted considerable attention, but often produced conflicting conclusions. This conflict, however, may result from differences in how niche similarity is measured and the specific null hypothesis being tested. We develop new methods for quantifying niche overlap that rely on a traditional ecological measure and a metric from mathematical statistics. We reexamine a classic study of niche conservatism between sister species in several groups of Mexican animals, and, for the first time, address alternative definitions of "niche conservatism" within a single framework using consistent methods. As expected, we find that environmental niches of sister species are more similar than expected under three distinct null hypotheses, but that they are rarely identical. We demonstrate how our measures can be used in phylogenetic comparative analyses by reexamining niche divergence in an adaptive radiation of Cuban anoles. Our results show that environmental niche overlap is closely tied to geographic overlap, but not to phylogenetic distances, suggesting that niche conservatism has not constrained local communities in this group to consist of closely related species. We suggest various randomization tests that may prove useful in other areas of ecology and evolutionary biology. [source] Homosexuality and "Compassionate" Conservatism in the Discourse of the Post-Reaganite RightCONSTELLATIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CRITICAL AND DEMOCRATIC THEORY, Issue 1 2001Paul ApostolidisArticle first published online: 16 DEC 200 [source] Accounting Conservatism and the Temporal Trends in Current Earnings' Ability to Predict Future Cash Flows versus Future Earnings: Evidence on the Trade-off between Relevance and ReliabilityCONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 2 2010SATI P. BANDYOPADHYAY M41; C23; D21; G38 This research reports that an increasing level of accounting conservatism over the 1973,2005 period is associated with: (1) an increase in the ability of current earnings to predict future cash flows and (2) a decrease in the ability of current earnings to predict future earnings. We also find that usefulness of earnings for explaining stock prices over book values is positively related to reliability but not to relevance. Our results hold for the constant and full samples in both in-sample and out-of-sample analyses and are robust to the use of alternative measures for relevance, reliability, earnings usefulness, and conservatism. Our findings about the relations among conservatism, relevance, reliability, and usefulness suggest a trade-off between relevance and reliability and seem to indicate that the adoption of an increasing number of conservative accounting standards has a possible adverse impact on earnings usefulness through a negative effect on reliability. [source] European Momentum Strategies, Information Diffusion, and Investor ConservatismEUROPEAN FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2005John A. Doukas G1; G11; G14 Abstract In this paper we conduct an out-of-sample test of two behavioural theories that have been proposed to explain momentum in stock returns. We test the gradual-information-diffusion model of Hong and Stein (1999) and the investor conservatism bias model of Barberis et al. (1998) in a sample of 13 European stock markets during the period 1988 to 2001. These two models predict that momentum comes from the (i) gradual dissemination of firm-specific information and (ii) investors' failure to update their beliefs sufficiently when they observe new public information. The findings of this study are consistent with the predictions of the behavioural models of Hong and Stein's (1999) and Barberis et al. (1998). The evidence shows that momentum is the result of the gradual diffusion of private information and investors' psychological conservatism reflected on the systematic errors they make in forming earnings expectations by not updating them adequately relative to their prior beliefs and by undervaluing the statistical weight of new information. [source] Negotiating Islam: Conservatism, Splintered Authority and Empowerment in Urban BangladeshIDS BULLETIN, Issue 2 2010Samia Huq Bangladesh has recently been seeing a rise in religiosity which has been treated as problematic, anti-secular and anti-progressive within the public sphere. Various writers describe this trend as having a disempowering effect on women and negating their self-expression. However, underlying these views is the assumption that the assertion of women's agency is not enough if it does not confront existing structures of relations. This article asks whether it is possible that in seeking changes in certain aspects of one's life, existing gender relations are not necessarily transformed, but indirectly challenged and reconfigured? The conclusion suggests that rather than a polarisation of the secular and religious ways of living most people are in fact in between, negotiating between the two camps, and borrowing ideas and ways from both. [source] Static output feedback sliding mode control for time-varying delay systems with time-delayed nonlinear disturbancesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ROBUST AND NONLINEAR CONTROL, Issue 7 2010X. G. Yan Abstract In this paper, a robust stabilization problem for a class of linear time-varying delay systems with disturbances is studied using sliding mode techniques. Both matched and mismatched disturbances, involving time-varying delay, are considered. The disturbances are nonlinear and have nonlinear bounds which are employed for the control design. A sliding surface is designed and the stability of the corresponding sliding motion is analysed based on the Razumikhin Theorem. Then a static output feedback sliding mode control with time delay is synthesized to drive the system to the sliding surface in finite time. Conservatism is reduced by using features of sliding mode control and systems structure. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing: Authority Relations, Ideological Conservatism, and Creativity in Confucian-Heritage CulturesJOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 1 2008DAVID YAU FAI HO ABSTRACT Throughout history, the generation, exercise, and dissemination of knowledge are fraught with dangers, the root causes of which are traceable to the definition of authority relations. The authors compare Greek myths and Chinese legends, setting the stage for a metarelational analysis of authority relations between teacher and students and between scholar-teachers and political rulers in Confucian-heritage cultures. These two relations are rooted in ideological conservatism. They are related in a higher-order relation or metarelation: Political control and the definition of the teacher-student relationship reinforce each other in consolidating authoritarian values. Thus, ideological conservatism shapes educational philosophy and socialization. It conflicts with present demands for creativity in the service of knowledge-based economies. Hence, a major issue in cultural change to be addressed concerns the dilemma between maintaining authoritarian control and enhancing creativity. [source] The Allowance for Uncollectible Accounts, Conservatism, and Earnings ManagementJOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 3 2010SCOTT B. JACKSON ABSTRACT We study the interrelation between conservatism and earnings management by examining the allowance for uncollectible accounts and its income statement counterpart, bad debt expense. We find that the allowance is conservative and that it has become more conservative over time. Conservatism may, however, facilitate earnings management. We find that firms manage bad debt expense downward (and even record,income-increasing,bad debt expense) to meet or beat analysts' earnings forecasts and that conservatism accentuates the extent to which firms manage bad debt expense. Further, we find that firms manage bad debt expense downward by drawing down previously recorded over-accruals of bad debt expense that have accumulated on the balance sheet. An implication of our study is that tighter limits on the amount by which firms are permitted to understate net assets may reduce their ability to manage earnings. [source] Debt Covenants and Accounting ConservatismJOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 1 2010VALERI V. NIKOLAEV ABSTRACT Using a sample of over 5,000 debt issues, I test whether firms with more extensive use of covenants in their public debt contracts exhibit timelier recognition of economic losses in accounting earnings. Covenants govern the transfer of decision-making and control rights from shareholders to bondholders when a company approaches financial distress and thereby limit managers' abilities to expropriate bondholder wealth. Covenants are expected to constrain managerial opportunism, however, only if the accounting system recognizes economic losses in earnings in a timely fashion. Thus, the demand for timely loss recognition should increase with a contract's reliance on covenants. Consistent with this conjecture, I find evidence that reliance on covenants in public debt contracts is positively associated with the degree of timely loss recognition. I also find evidence that the presence of prior private debt mitigates this relationship. [source] On the Relation between Conservatism in Accounting Standards and Incentives for Earnings ManagementJOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 3 2007QI CHEN ABSTRACT This paper studies the role of conservative accounting standards in alleviating rational yet dysfunctional unobservable earnings manipulation. We show that when accounting numbers serve both the valuation role (in which potential investors use accounting reports to assess a firm's expected future payoff) and the stewardship role (in which current shareholders rely on the same reports to monitor their risk-averse manager), current firm owners have incentives to engage in earnings management. Such manipulation reduces accounting numbers' stewardship value and leads to inferior risk sharing. We then show that risk sharing, and hence contract efficiency, can be improved under a conservative accounting standard where, absent earnings management, accounting earnings represent true economic earnings with a downward bias, compared with under an unbiased standard where, absent earnings management, accounting earnings represent true economic earnings without bias. [source] Conservatism and Cross-Sectional Variation in the Post,Earnings Announcement DriftJOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 4 2006GANAPATHI NARAYANAMOORTHY ABSTRACT Accounting conservatism allows me to identify a previously undocumented source of predictable cross-sectional variation in Standardized Unexpected Earnings' autocorrelations viz. the sign of the most recent earnings realization and present evidence that the market ignores this variation ("loss effect"). It is possible to earn returns higher than from the Bernard and Thomas (1990) strategy by incorporating this feature. Additionally, the paper shows that the "loss effect" is different from the "cross quarter" effect shown by Rangan and Sloan (1998) and it is possible to combine the two effects to earn returns higher than either strategy alone. Thus, the paper corroborates the Bernard and Thomas finding that stock prices fail to reflect the extent to which quarterly earnings series differ from a seasonal random walk and extends it by showing that the market systematically underestimates time-series properties resulting from accounting conservatism. [source] Managerial Ownership and Accounting Conservatism in Japan: A Test of Management Entrenchment EffectJOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 7-8 2010Akinobu Shuto Abstract:, We examine the effect of managerial ownership on the demand for accounting conservatism in Japan. We find that within the low and high levels of managerial ownership, managerial ownership is significantly negatively related to the asymmetric timeliness of earnings, which is consistent with the implication of the incentive alignment effect. We also find a significant positive relationship between managerial ownership and the asymmetric timeliness of earnings for the intermediate levels of managerial ownership, as suggested by the management entrenchment effect. These evidences suggest the possibility that accounting conservatism contributes to addressing the agency problem between managers and shareholders. [source] Accounting Conservatism and Transitory Earnings in Value and Growth StrategiesJOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 5-6 2010Mattias Hamberg Abstract:, The value premium earned on value and growth investment strategies increases after adjusting for transitory earnings and for the accounting conservatism bias in the book value of equity. Simple investment strategies based on earnings-to-price (E/P) and book-to-market (B/M) performed on the Swedish stock market between 1980 and 2004 generate an annual value premium of 11 to 14%. Adjustments for transitory earnings and for the conservatism bias increase the value premium by 2 to 4 percentage points, and at the same time they improve the consistency of earning it. These results suggest that transitory earnings and accounting conservatism introduce noise into E/P and B/M measures. Adjusting for these accounting characteristics makes the identification based on E/P and B/M more effective. [source] Bank Relationships and the Value Relevance of the Income Statement: Evidence from Income-Statement ConservatismJOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 7-8 2007Wooseok ChoiArticle first published online: 10 MAY 200 Abstract:, This study examines the effects of a firm's debt financing decision on the informativeness of the income statement. This study specifically examines the association between a firm's bank dependence and the value relevance of the income statement by investigating the income-statement conservatism of firms with bank loans. Focusing on relatively small businesses, this study finds that income-statement conservatism, measured as timely loss recognition, is increasing in a firm's bank dependence. This study also finds that the value relevance of the income statement is increasing in a firm's bank dependence. The findings of this paper suggest that the usefulness of the income statement varies with a firm's bank dependence, indicating that the value relevance of the income statement is a function of a firm's debt financing decision. The findings further suggest that bank relationships affect the value relevance of the income statement through their influence on income-statement conservatism. [source] Conservatism and Coherentism in Aristotle, Confucius, and MenciusJOURNAL OF CHINESE PHILOSOPHY, Issue 3 2001James A. Ryan [source] The Impact of the Asian Financial Crisis on Conservatism and Timeliness of Earnings: Evidence from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and ThailandJOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT & ACCOUNTING, Issue 1 2010Thanyaluk Vichitsarawong This paper examines conservatism and timeliness of earnings in the period surrounding the 1997 Asian financial crisis in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Prior research suggests that managers tended to be more aggressive in reporting good news and delayed recognition of bad news during the financial crisis (less conservative and less timely in financial reporting). After the crisis, these four countries implemented corporate governance measures to stabilize their financial systems and improve regulation and supervision (that should improve conservatism and timeliness). We examine and find that conservatism and timeliness of earnings during the crisis period are low, but improved in the post-crisis period. More importantly, conservatism and timeliness in the post-crisis period is even greater than in the pre-crisis period. We measure conservatism using Basu's model and the accumulation of non-operating accruals suggested by Givoly and Hayn. The findings from both measures are consistent with an increase in conservatism after the crisis period. Overall, the results indicate that corporate governance reforms in these four countries had a positive impact on conservatism and timeliness of earnings. [source] Age Differences in Conservatism: Evidence on the Mediating Effects of Personality and Cognitive StyleJOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 1 2009Ilse Cornelis ABSTRACT The present study investigates the commonly found age,conservatism relationship by combining insights from studies on the development of personality and motivated social cognition with findings on the relationships between these factors and conservative beliefs. Based on data collected in Belgium (N=2,373) and Poland (N=939), we found the expected linear effect of age on indicators of social-cultural conservatism in Belgium and Poland and the absence of such effects for indicators of economic-hierarchical conservatism. We further demonstrated that these effects of age on indicators of cultural conservatism in both countries were (in part) mediated through the personality factor Openness to Experience and the motivated cognition variable Need for Closure. The consistency of these findings in two countries with a very dissimilar sociopolitical history attests to the importance of the developmental perspective for the study of the relationship between age and conservatism. [source] ,A Tiny Little Footnote in History': Conservative Centre ForwardPARLIAMENTARY HISTORY, Issue 2 2010STEPHEN EVANS In May 1985, two years after he had returned to the back benches, Francis Pym launched the first organised display of dissent within the parliamentary Conservative Party against Margaret Thatcher's leadership: Conservative Centre Forward. Those Conservative MPs who joined the group were very much believers in One Nation Conservatism. Conservative Centre Forward survived for barely a week after going public; it rapidly collapsed amid accusations of disloyalty and inept leadership. The group proved to be a short-lived experiment which achieved little of note and exposed those who were involved to widespread ridicule. Yet, it was precisely because Conservative Centre Forward collapsed so quickly and achieved so little that it was significant. In its own way, the short life of the group provided a revealing commentary upon the character of the mid-1980s Conservative Party. It was a party which, on the one hand, was moving inexorably to the right and therefore ever further away from the values of One Nation Conservatism which Conservative Centre Forward espoused. On the other hand, it was a party which was still traditional enough to view open displays of dissent, of whatever magnitude, as a threat to the unity upon which its continued electoral success depended. [source] A Tripartite Approach to Right-Wing Authoritarianism: The Authoritarianism-Conservatism-Traditionalism ModelPOLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 5 2010John Duckitt Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) has been conceptualized and measured as a unidimensional personality construct comprising the covariation of the three traits of authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism. However, new approaches have criticized this conceptualization and instead viewed these three "traits" as three distinct, though related, social attitude dimensions. Here we extend this approach providing clear definitions of these three dimensions as ideological attitude constructs of Authoritarianism, Conservatism, and Traditionalism. These dimensions are seen as attitudinal expressions of basic social values or motivational goals that represent different, though related, strategies for attaining collective security at the expense of individual autonomy. We report data from five samples and three different countries showing that these three dimensions could be reliably measured and were factorially distinct. The three dimensions also differentially predicted interpersonal behaviour, social policy support, and political party support. It is argued that conceptualizing and measuring RWA as a set of three related ideological attitude dimensions may better explain complex sociopolitical phenomena than the currently dominant unidimensional personality based model. [source] Political Conservatism, Need for Cognitive Closure, and Intergroup HostilityPOLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2010Agnieszka Golec De Zavala Two studies examined the interaction of political conservatism and the need for cognitive closure in predicting aggressiveness in intergroup conflict and hostility toward outgroups. In the first study, Polish participants indicated their preference for coercive conflict strategies in the context of a real-life intergroup conflict. Only among participants who identify themselves as conservative, need for cognitive closure was positively and significantly related to preference for aggressive actions against the outgroup. In the second study, the predicted interaction was investigated in the context of the terrorist threat in Poland. The findings indicated that high in need for closure conservatives showed greater hostility against Arabs and Muslims only when they believed that Poland was under threat of terrorist attacks inspired by Islamist fundamentalism. [source] The Evolution of the Centre-right and the State of Scottish ConservatismPOLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2001Michael Dyer This article considers the decline of Scottish Conservatism, 1951,97. The statistical data indicate that 91 percent of the variance in Tory support is accounted for by an underlying negative trend against time, that similar patterns appear when the data is disaggregated by region, and that short-term fluctuations have been more in conformity with English results than is conventionally understood. The process of generational change is seen as a waning of the cultural conditions which produced the centre-right coalition that dominated Scottish politics, 1931,64, and its fragmentation into Conservatism, Liberalism, and Scottish Nationalism. The changed circumstances are not seen as peculiarly Scottish, but the consequences for Scottish Conservatism of an evolution affecting the centre-right across the United Kingdom. [source] Ideological Typologies of Contemporary British ConservatismPOLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 3 2005Timothy Heppell Prior to the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, traditional academic assumptions about the British Conservative party focused on its emphasis on party unity, the centrality of loyalty to the party, and its ideological pragmatism in the pursuit of power. The leadership of her successor, John Major, was undermined by disunity, disloyalty and ideological conflict, which contributed to the Tory party's removal from power. The ideological implosion of one the most disciplined and electorally successful parties in Western Europe, has stimulated considerable academic appraisal. This article considers the design and utilisation of the ideological typologies of contemporary British conservatism that have been used by academics to help explain the nature of this ideological conflict. By analysing these developments in typological design, we can enhance our understanding of the ideological realignment of contemporary British conservatism in the immediate post-Thatcherite era. [source] Radical Conservatism: The Right's Political Religion , By Robert Brent ToplinTHE HISTORIAN, Issue 2 2008Robert A. Goldberg No abstract is available for this article. [source] Republican Women: Feminism and Conservatism from Suffrage through the Rise of the New Right , By Catherine E. RymphTHE HISTORIAN, Issue 3 2007Mary C. Brennan No abstract is available for this article. [source] Conservatism, the Protestant Right, and the Failure of Religious HistoryTHE JOURNAL OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Issue 4 2004D. G. Hart [source] Association Between Accounting Conservatism and Analysts' Forecast Inefficiency,ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL STUDIES, Issue 2 2010Jinhan Pae M41 Abstract We find that analysts' earnings forecasts do not fully impound the implications of accounting conservatism. Forecast optimism is negatively associated with the magnitude of beginning-of-year balance sheet reserves (BSR), which are associated with conservative accounting in prior years. However, this result vanishes once we allow for the negative association, documented in several prior studies, between BSR and Basu's asymmetric timeliness measure of conservatism [Journal of Accounting and Economics 24 (1997) 3]. After controlling for this association, we find that forecasters' under-reaction to bad versus good news is negatively associated with the magnitude of BSR. We obtain similar results after allowing for the positive association between asymmetric timeliness and Khan and Watts' C_Score [Journal of Accounting and Economics 48 (2009) 132]. Therefore, our results are consistent with a subtle form of inefficiency of forecasts with respect to accounting conservatism; that is, analysts do not fully appreciate that the earnings of companies with lower BSR or higher C_Scores are likely to be both: (i) lower relative to forecast; and (ii) more asymmetrically timely than the earnings of companies exhibiting higher BSR or lower C_Scores. [source] British Conservatism and Trade Unionism, 1945,64 , By Peter DoreyBRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 3 2010Alan Booth No abstract is available for this article. [source] Sovereign nations and global markets: modern British Conservatism and hyperglobalismBRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 3 2002David Baker In this article we seek to trace through the major stands of British Euroscepticism and concentrate, in particular, on the importance of a powerful ,hyperglobalist' Eurosceptical strand within British Conservatism. We investigate the British Conservatives' recent divisions over European integration, against the background of the party's increasingly marginal status in British party politics. The piece also draws on findings from two recent surveys of the attitudes of British parliamentarians to European integration, carried out by the Members of Parliament Project for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). We explore how Conservative divisions of opinion are related in part to particular understandings of globalisation and regionalisation and attempt to show how globalist ideology has unexpectedly re,emphasised and bolstered the traditional nationalism of the Tory party and caused an increasingly hostile attitude amongst many British Conservatives towards the European project as it is presently constituted. We also examine recent attempts to map British Conservative Euroscepticism on to continental varieties using a mixture of ideological positioning and party system (Taggart 1998), arguing that this ignores the extent to which British Eurosceptics advance unique (in EU member state terms) hyperglobalist (rather than isolationist or protectionist) arguments in objecting to further European integration. [source] Accounting Conservatism and the Temporal Trends in Current Earnings' Ability to Predict Future Cash Flows versus Future Earnings: Evidence on the Trade-off between Relevance and ReliabilityCONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, Issue 2 2010SATI P. BANDYOPADHYAY M41; C23; D21; G38 This research reports that an increasing level of accounting conservatism over the 1973,2005 period is associated with: (1) an increase in the ability of current earnings to predict future cash flows and (2) a decrease in the ability of current earnings to predict future earnings. We also find that usefulness of earnings for explaining stock prices over book values is positively related to reliability but not to relevance. Our results hold for the constant and full samples in both in-sample and out-of-sample analyses and are robust to the use of alternative measures for relevance, reliability, earnings usefulness, and conservatism. Our findings about the relations among conservatism, relevance, reliability, and usefulness suggest a trade-off between relevance and reliability and seem to indicate that the adoption of an increasing number of conservative accounting standards has a possible adverse impact on earnings usefulness through a negative effect on reliability. [source] Factors influencing the publication of social performance information: an Australian case studyCORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2005Tony McMurtrie Abstract Traditional research into the social responsibility information published by firms has concentrated on the information published in the annual report and has not considered closely the driving forces that have guided the identification and preparation of information that is to be included in that publication. This paper reports on a case study that has examined some of the internal factors that have driven the publication of social responsibility information, and shows that while the annual report is still a major publication medium the internet plays a very significant role in the dissemination of information. Factors that impact on the publication media and the content of the published information in these cases were seen to be the nature of the information system used, the intended audience and their perceived power, and the level of corporate conservatism that guided the companies' management. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||