SYNOPSIS: This study examines whether financial analysts and institutional investors play a disciplinary role in monitoring corporate financial reporting and disclosure. Using a sample of firms that meet or marginally beat analysts’ forecasts, likely through upward earnings management and downward expectations management, this study shows that managers’ use of the two tactics is associated with...

Social comparison involves positioning the self relative to others on a vertical or status dimension (ranging from upward to downward comparisons) and a horizontal or solidarity dimension (ranging from contrastive to connective comparisons). Across 3 studies in which 389 undergraduates recorded everyday social comparisons (n = 4,417), downward and connective comparisons were rated as more helpf...

A brief survey is conducted of the inheritance principle the conveyance of properties between components within a hierarchical relational structure. The standard form of inheritance is considered, using the subset (is-a) relation and highlighted as an example of downward inheritance. Downward inheritance is extended to specialisation of actions, and cases are presented in which the rule fails. ...

Musically untrained participants in five age groups (5-, 6-, 8-, and 11-year-olds, and adults) heard sequences of three 1 s piano tones in which the first and third tones were identical (A5, or 880 Hz) but the middle tone was displaced upward or downward in pitch. Their task was to identify whether the middle tone was higher or lower than the other two tones. In experiment 1, 5-year-olds succes...

In this paper strategies for the development and implementation of automatic finite element modeling systems are discussed within the context of knowledge engineering. In the light of language analysis, the finite element model generation, which involves transformation between three models: physical, analytical, and finite element, models, is seen as a process of language translation. Taking in...

[Purpose] This study compared the electromyographic activity of the quadriceps in hemiplegic patients during the downward, maintenance, and upward phases of squat exercises performed with the feet parallel and with the non-paretic foot lifted. [Subjects] A total of 17 hemiplegic patients (9 males and 8 females) volunteered for this study. [Methods] All subjects performed squat exercises with th...

Intergenerational Earnings Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution This paper analyzes the extent to which intergenerational upward and downward mobility in earnings are related to individuals’ preferences for redistribution. A novel survey question from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study – whether the taxes paid by unskilled workers are too high, adequate or too low – are used to elicit...

The formation dynamics of granular heaps in a vibrating bed is studied by a simple continuum model using the heap profile as the dynamical variable. Vibration increases the local height but is counter-balanced by the nonlinear coupling, which tends to suppress the growth of the height. The time evolution of the heap towards the steady state is obtained and it is demonstrated explicitly that the...

The purpose of this paper is to further investigate criteria reduction in the set-valued ordered decision system, in which some objects may have more than one value for an attribute with preference-ordered domains. By considering the uncertainty of criteria values in such information system, we define a similarity dominance relation and give the dominance-based rough approximation of the upward...

Juvenile budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) observed thin film transistor video playback of a virtual conspecific demonstrator using its beak to remove a stopper from a food box, either by pulling the object upward or by pushing it downward. Simultaneously (Experiment 1) or subsequently (Experiment 2), the observers were offered a similar stopper box and rewarded with access to food for each...