V INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES IN ACCOUNTING, FINANCE AND TAX

JOINTLY SPONSORED BY

THE RESEARCH GROUP ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN ACCOUNTING, THE UNIVERSITY OF HUELVA, SPAIN

AND

THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES SECTION OF THE AMERICAN ACCOUNTING ASSOCIATION

 

NOVEMBER 2-3, 2000

UNIVERSITY OF HUELVA, SPAIN

 

PROGRAMME CO-CHAIRS

Enrique Bonsón. University of Huelva
Alan Sangster. The Open University. London

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Barbro Back. Turku School of Economics and Business Administration. Finland
Andrew D. Bailey Jr. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
USA
Amelia Baldwin-Morgan.
University of Alabama. USA
Enrique Bonsón.
University of Huelva. Spain
Carol E. Brown. Oregon State University. USA
Marilyn Greenstein. Lehigh University. Pennsylvania. USA
Mary Jackson. London Business School. UK
Marco de Marco.
Catholic University of Milan. Italy
Julio Moreno-Dávila. Enginyeria La Salle.
Univ. Ramon Llull. Barcelona. Spain
Sri Ramamoorty. Arthur Andersen, LLP. Chicago. Illinois. USA
Alan Sangster. The Open University.
London. UK
Carlos Serrano.
University of Zaragoza. Spain
Hermann Siebdrat. University of Siegen.
Germany
Guillermo J. Sierra.
University of Sevilla. Spain
Rajendra Srivastava.
University of Kansas. USA
Miklos Vasarhelyi.
Rutgers University. New Jersey. USA
Maia Wentland. University of Lausanne.
Switzerland

COLLABORATING ENTITIES

Asociación Española de Contabilidad y Administración de Empresas (AECA)
Caja Rural Provincial de Huelva
Colegio de Economistas de Huelva
PriceWaterhouseCoopers
Universidad de Huelva
· Departamento de Economía Financiera, Contabilidad y Dirección de Operaciones
· Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales
· Vicerrectorado de Investigación y Tercer Ciclo
· Vicerrectorado de Nuevas Tecnologías
· Vicerrectorado de Relaciones Institucionales y Extensión Cultural

 

Thursday 2nd November 2000

8:30-9:00 Registration

9:00-9:30 Opening Ceremony. Excmo. Sr. Rector Magnífico de la Universidad de Huelva.

9:30-11:00 Keynote speakers (I)

XBRL. THE DIGITAL MEDIA PERSPECTIVE. Zachary Coffin. KPMG Consulting. USA.

DESIGN AND APPLICATIONS OF AN INTELLIGENT FINANCIAL REPORTING AND AUDITING AGENT WITH NET KNOWLEDGE (FRAANK). Presented by: Rajendra Srivastava. University of Kansas.

11:00-11-30 Break

11:30-13:00 Keynote speakers (II)

REA ECONOMIC AGENTS AS HOMINES ECONOMICI IN AN AGENT-ORIENTED INFORMATION SYSTEMS. William E. McCarthy. Michigan State University.

THE MAP OF FINANCIAL CIRCULATION IN THE BUSINESS ENTERPRISE: A NEW FINANCIAL STATEMENT. Moisés García. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

13:00-15:00 Lunch

15:00-17:00 Management Accounting

A COST SYSTEM GRAPHICAL DESIGN USING MULTILEVEL "COST-FORM GRAPH" TECHNOLOGY. Francisco López and Manuel López. Universidad de Almería.

A SIMULATION SYSTEM FOR THE MASTER PRODUCTION SCHEDULE. Francisco Aguado and Santiago García. Universidad de Huelva.

APPROACHING AN ENTERPRISE KNOWLEDGE PORTAL FOR PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION BUSINESSES. Hermann Siebdrat. University of Siegen. Germany

DEVELOPMENT AND COST EFFECTIVE APPLICATIONS OF EXPERT SYSTEMS FOR IMPROVING THE PRODUCTIVITY OF ORGANIZATIONS: A CASE STUDY. Chia-Ling Chao. Nova Southeastern University. Shwu-Min Horng. Motorola. USA.

CONTROL AND AUDIT OF OBJECT ORIENTED SYSTEMS. Kaustav Sen. Pace University. New York.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE MODERN MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS. Gemma Hernando and María Elena García. Universidad de Cantabria.

17:00-17:30 Break.

17:30-18:50 Neural Networks, CBR & Decision Tables

COMPANY CLASIFICATION AND BANKRUPTCY PREDICTION MODELS: AN APPLICATION TO CHILEAN COMPANIES. Gianni Romani, Patricio Aroca, Nelson Aguirre, Paola Leiton and Javier Muñoz. Universidad Católica del Norte. Chile.

THE USE OF A NEURAL NETWORK IN THE PREDICTION OF THE IBEX-35 STOCK INDEX. Juan José Molero. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Francisco Javier Sevillano. Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Piedad Tolmos Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

CBR USED AS A MECHANISM FOR SOLVING DECISION MAKING PROBLEMS AND FOR CONSTRUCTING MODELS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY. María José Charlo and Guillermo Sierra. Universidad de Sevilla.

DECISION TABLES: AN OVERVIEW OF THE EXISTING LITERATURE. Ana María Moreno, M. Verhelle and Jan Vanthienen. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Belgium

21:00-24:00 Flamenco dinner

 

Friday 3rd November 2000

9:30-11:00 Digital Reporting

ARE SPANISH COMPANIES MAKING USE OF THE WEB FOR FINANCIAL REPORTING? AN EVOLUTIONARY ANALYSIS. Francisco Javier Sevillano. Universidad Complutense de Madrid Juan José Molero. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.

DIGITAL REPORTING PRACTICES BY THE TOP 100 EUROPEAN COMPANIES. Enrique Bonsón. Universidad de Huelva.

THE EMERGING ELECTRONIC BUSINESS REPORTING LANGUAGE XBRL. Liv A. Watson. Brian L. McGuire and Eric E. Cohen. XBRL working group. USA.

11:00-11:30 Break

11:30-12:30 Internet

INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTING THROUGH THE INTERNET. Leandro Cañibano. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Sharon Lightner. San Diego State University. Jose Luis Ucieda. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

PERSONALIZING FINANCIAL INTERACTIONS USING WEB MINING. Maurice Mulvenna. MINEit Software. Tony de Bree. ABN AMRO Bank. Sarabjot Anand. Alex Büchner. MINEit Software. Matthias Baumgarten. University of Ulster. UK

12:30-12:45 Presentation of The International Journal of Digital Accounting Research. Enrique Bonsón and Miklos Vasarhelyi, editors.

12:45-13:30 Closing conference.

A DRAMATIC NEW AUDIT MODEL: TOWARDS CONTINUOUS ASSURANCE. Miklos A. Vasarhelyi. Rutgers University.

13:30-15-30 Lunch

16:00-20:00 XBRL SYMPOSIUM. With Zachary Coffin and Liv Watson. XBRL.org

16:00-17:00 XBRL Overview.

17:00-17:30 An XBRL Demo

17:30- 18:00 Break

18:00 - 18:45 Domain Group Taxonomy. We discuss the concept of an accounting taxonomy and the framework for creating taxonomies by industry and by country.

18:45 – 20:00 XBRL-The Next Step. An open discussion among all participants, moderated by XBRL representatives, to assess the role of the Spanish institutions in XBRL's development and how best to potentially launch a XBRL Committee locally

 

ABSTRACTS

 A SIMULATION SYSTEM FOR THE MASTER PRODUCTION SCHEDULE

Francisco Aguado Correa. Departamento de Economía Financiera, Contabilidad y Dirección de Operaciones. Universidad de Huelva

Santiago García González. Departamento de Economía Financiera, Contabilidad y Dirección de Operaciones. Universidad de Huelva

In the increasingly competitive environment of enterprises, simulation has become a very powerful computerized tool for management decision making.

Decision making is an essential aspect of all management activity. Although the specifics of each situation vary, decision making generally involves the same basic steps: recognize and clearly define the problem, collect the information needed to analyze possible alternatives, and choose and implement the most feasible alternative.

One of the key decision areas of Operations Management is master production scheduling, that obtain the master production schedule (MPS), i.e. the time-phased plan specifying how many and when the firm plans to build each specific item, with an acceptable cost and level of service.

This way, the firm’s operation function must attempt to lower the cost of labor, inventories, overhead, etc.

The importance of the costs requires the development of a correct planning and control of the same ones, question that affects to the accounting function, which is the one in charge of developing accurate cost data.

In this paper, a simulation system for the master production schedule (MPS2000) is presented. This has been designed for the case of discrete production. We have provided it, with a "friendly" and very helpful interface aimed at giving, even the non-expert user, quick and easy access. Furthermore, solutions such as integration with aggregate plan, on-line updating, performance measuremen or graphical representation are added, as well as the possibility to transfer data to other software packages.

 

 

 

 PREDICTING STOCKS AVERAGE PRICE: A NEURAL FUZZY APPROACH

José Manuel Andújar Márquez.

*Patricio Salmerón Revuelta

Omar Sánchez Pérez.

**Juan José de la Vega Jiménez.

Department of Ingeniería Electrónica de Sistemas Informáticos y Automática.

**Departament of Física Aplicada e Ingeniería Eléctrica.

**Departament of Economía Financiera, Contabilidad y Dirección de Operaciones.

University of Huelva.

This paper is related to the application of adaptive fuzzy system for human expert emulation.The variables taking into account for financial investment (more precisely, stocks transactions, average price and closing price) are used as input-output information for black-box modeling.

The advantage of this method is that thanks to the adaptive fuzzy system it is possible to incorporate to the model the knowledge of an investment advisor. To do it, we have to define the investment advisor’s membership functions in the universe of discourse.

Although only three variables are used here, the method proposed is flexible. More variables can be used to obtain a more precise result. Additionally, different membership functions can be taken into account in the modeling process.

Keywords: financial investment, stocks transactions, average price, closing price, artificial intelligence, financial prediction, fuzzy logic.

 

 

 DIGITAL REPORTING PRACTICES BY THE TOP 100 EUROPEAN COMPANIES

Enrique Bonsón Ponte

Departamento de Economía Financiera, Contabilidad y

Dirección de Operaciones

Universidad de Huelva. Spain.

bonson@uhu.es

The dissemination of accounting information by means of Internet is adding a new dimension to corporate reporting. Online, real time, information will soon replace historical financial statements at present being provided by companies to stakeholders. Businesses could provide current information used by managers for decision making. Search and presentation capabilities of the Internet will allow companies to add value to their corporate information. Companies should be able to offer to main stakeholders a wide range of additional non financial information that could be accessed on demand depending on the stakeholder´s interest.

In this work we aim to analyze the scope and impact of electronic dissemination of accounting information in Europe. To do that, we have studied the eurotop 100 companies as of May 2000. The paper is structured as follows: The next section offers an overview of previous research on Internet corporate reporting. Section three describes the studies that have been carried out by major accounting organizations. On section four, the results of the eurotop 100 survey are presented. The final section summarizes our findings and underlines future research issues to be addressed.

 

 

 

 INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTING THROUGH THE INTERNET

Leandro Cañibano, Jose Luis Ucieda

Departamento Contabilidad y Organización de Empresas

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Sharon Lightner1

School of Accounting

San Diego State University

Business globalization, information technologies, and international accounting harmonization are all taking place in today’s business world. Professionals must acquire new skills to operate in the new economy, think globally, and understand and comprehend the possibilities of the new technologies. In this context, an experimental international accounting course has been developed to make students, practitioners, and members from standard setting bodies from the Technological University of Hong Kong (China), Université of Fribourg (Switzerland), San Diego State University (California, USA), and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain), participate in a synchronous course using the latest internet-based communication technologies.

Correspondence address: Jose Luis Ucieda, Departamento de Contabilidad y Organización de Empresas, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Ctra. Colmenar km. 15, Madrid 28043; email: joseluis.ucieda@uam.es

 

 

 Development and Cost-Effective Applications of Expert Systems for Improving the Productivity of Organizations: A Case Study

Chia-Ling Chao

School of Business and Entrepreneurship

Nova Southeastern University

Shwu-Min Horng

Supply Chain Services

Motorola

This paper presents a case study of combining the use of an expert system and regression analysis to support decision making involved in improving the productivity of an organizationillustrate . A pharmaceutical distributor in Taiwan is used as an example to the development and application of an expert system to tackle the daily decision problem of handling uncertainty in carrying out delivery tasksdelivery . Regression analysis is used as a method to predict the working time of each driver who undertakes the task for a specific regionbalance . The application of an expert system coupled with the use of regression analysis is proposed to the workloadwhether , increase capabilities of handling more orders, improve productivity, and reduce relevant costs. To determine or not the proposed expert system will be technically feasible and costsuccess or -effective, a systematic way of predicting the failure of the system is implementedThus, the . It was found that the project would be worth much more than what it would cost. proposed expert system is economically justified.

 

 

  CBR USED AS A MECHANISM FOR SOLVING DECISION MAKING PROBLEMS AND FOR CONSTRUCTING MODELS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY.

María José Charlo Molina.. universidad de Sevilla .

Guillermo J. Sierra Molina. Universidad de Sevilla.

There is an area of research which tries to demostrate the importance of accounting as useful information in different decision-making models. In these models the commonly used statistic-econometric approach is abandoned in favour of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

At the same time, we are concerned by the complexity of the decision-making process in general, and especially, in those processes which, from an external point of view, classify companies and are based on variables calculated on the basis of accounting, profitability, solvency, etc. Among those decision-making processes for companies analized externally, we were particularly attracted to the problem of the granting of bank loans.

So, banking institutions make decisions on the basis on the information which experience has shown to be most relevant in the light of different variables: the type of company, the sector in which it operates, etc. This action led us to think about the possibility of applying Case Based-Reasoning (CBR) technology to this type of decision and seeing if it were possible to arrive at the same decision as the analyst regarding bank loans.

The objective of this project is to demostrate that the process of risk analysis in a corporate environment can be carried out using the AI technique of CBR which will let us reach the same credit decisions as the analyst, and will allow the individual analysis of each credit, underlining, as well, the reasons which prompt us to take the decision and the most significant variables in the process. The objective of this project is not the identification of the best possible model, but rather the establishing of a model which helps the risk analyst with his decision on possibly granting a bank loan in a simple and understanding way, explaining the steps to be taken in order to recommend a determined reply.

To complete this process, we have divided it into the following sections: firstly, the introduction of AI and CBR; secondly, the decision-making process of the risk analyst and the key factors to be borne in mind in the decisions on bank loans. Thirdly, an explanation of how the research has been designed and what questionnaire was completed by the analyst on the different financial institutions in order to supply a database. We shall see how we can work with the sample obtained and what is the result of the study carried out, underlining what we consider to be the most important variables for the computer tool. Lastly, we shall put forward the most relevant conclusions of this research and the work which, along similar lines, we could carry out in the future.

 

 

 

 XBRL—The Digital Media Perspective

Zachary Coffin

Program Leader – Digital Media Institute

KPMG Consulting

This paper is intended for strategic executives in every sector, and assumes only general knowledge of financial reporting and technology. Financial reporting is fundamental to every business and organization, and XBRL ("Extensible Business Reporting Language") is a key development in the reporting of financial information over the internet. In fact, in the internet age, every company is a digital media company, because communicating financial performance-required of every business-is, fundamentally, communicating information, which is to say, content. Just as entertainment companies seek to reach key audiences, companies will adopt the best practices of digital media to communicate their performance in order to gain support from analysts, creditors and investors. For many companies, XBRL will be this first step toward "digital reporting." It then becomes increasingly difficult to identify entities by their traditional role, and, if we look at today's digital media companies as a glimpse of the future, companies will be able to be identified only by the way they interact with others. The "calculus of digital reporting" (continuously measuring and reporting at the micro-level) will propel a number of societal and business model transformations. The companies that will benefit most in a world of digital reporting, will be those who recognize and adopt the best practices in digital media.

 

 

 

 THE MAP OF FINANCIAL CIRCULATION IN THE BUSINESS ENTERPRISE: A NEW FINANCIAL STATEMENT

Moisés García

Departamento Contabilidad y Organización de Empresas

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

e-mail: moises.garcia@ uam.es

The reality represented by financial statements of business enterprises is the structure of economic accumulation(financial position). This structure is determined by the discrete topological structure of economic(financial) circulation, that in turn, is propelled by economic activity and economic events. Then we have the following causal chain for a full explanation of the economic(financial) accumulation:

ECONOMIC ACTIVITY AND EVENTS® ECONOMIC(FINANCIAL) CIRCULATION ® ECONOMIC(FINANCIAL) ACCUMULATION

There is a lack in the conventional accounting theory and practice explaining the changes in the economic accumulation of a business enterprise from economic activity and events. This lack has a name: THE economic (financial) circulation in the business enterprise.

In a recent speech(September 28, 1998) in the NEW YORK UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR LAW AND BUSINESS Mr. Arthur Lewitt Chairman of the Securities and Exchange COMMISSION, worried about the recent accounting practices included in the so called "Earnings Management", said:

"First I have instructed the SEC staff to require well detailed disclosures about the impact of changes in accounting assumptions. This should include a supplement to the financial statement showing beginning and ending balances as well as activity in between (the remarks are mine) including any adjustments".

The proper means showing that "activity in between" is the map of financial CIRCULATION in business enterprise, which is the subject of this paper.

 

 

 

 

 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE MODERN MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS

Gemma Hernando Moliner

María Elena García Ruiz

Dpt. of Business Administration,

University of Cantabria (Spain)

The generalized incorporation of IT has implicated a radical change in economic and social areas because of the modification of the principal factors in economic development (from tangibles resources to intangible information and knowledge), the game rules (global field) and consequently, the values for social unfolding for people and firms (quickly adaptability to the environment).

Technology revolution has been, and is, the cause and the consequence of organizational change process in big and small enterprises, adapting themselves to the environmental changes in order to subsist at medium and long terms. About this, IT are seen as key facilities these entrepreneurial adaptation processes.

Both the disposition and the competence intensification that appear in the majority of economic sectors, joined to the necessity of the possibility of more and better information for entrepreneurial management. This being the point of the new systems development in order to take competitive advantages of good information. In this sense, MAS, as one of the most important formal information subsystem in the organization, has assumed the challenge of adaptation to new organizational approaches through its models redesign and the rethinking of its tools, in order to guaranty its utility as a service tool for managers.

With the present process of globalisation, the economic world has become impregnated of a integrated attitude that has a reflect, specially, in management with diverse approaches: the conjunction of economic and social field in the conception of the firms, the difumination between short and long term in decisional processes, the narrow attaching between real and financial areas and the juxtaposition of human and technologic factors. And all this renders obvious the flexible and virtual organisational structure as a model for the more adapted firms to the competitive environment.

As it was possible to hope, this integrated and flexible attitude has been extended to the management techniques, like MAS. Theses systems must answer consequently: integrated posture of tools, and versatile and coherent structuration with the new organisational modelling. This last aspect lets us to propose the suitability of the present integrated proposal of the balanced scorecard as a backbone model of a MAS in his most wide conception.

 

 

 A cost system graphical design using multilevel "cost-form graph" technology

Francisco López Cruces

Manuel López Godoy

Departamento de Dirección y Gestión de Empresas

University of Almería (Spain)

This paper has a double aim: to present the methodology designed by the authors to represent the production process using the cost-form graph language —developed by Professor Moisés García and frameworked in the circulation analysis theory—, and show an empirical evidence of the aforementioned methodology in co-operatives companies involved in fruit and vegetable marketing and selling. With this aim we start showing the basis of cost-form graph, essential to the understanding of the value circulation maps. We follow presenting the proposed methodology, which includes: a working plan, the notation conventions used, and a multilevel focus for showing the process cartography. We end with the application of that methodology in three production lines of one of the co-operatives involved in fruit and vegetable marketing.

 

 

 

 "REA ECONOMIC AGENTS AS HOMINES ECONOMICI IN AN AGENT-ORIENTED INFORMATION SYSTEMS ENVIRONMENT"
William E. McCarthy, Arthur Andersen Alumni Professor
 Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI., USA
 Email:
mccarth4@msu.edu

The REA model is a pattern for an internal business process or an external market exchange. It consists of two mirror image constellations of the economic objects involved in a transaction -- economic Resources, economic Events, and economic Agents – connected by a duality relationship.In microeconomic terms, the full REA pattern is a representation of a production
function that transforms one or more types of input into an output of greater value. More recent REA work has extended this basic pattern in two directions:

1. horizontally into types and commitments; and 

2. vertically into enterprise value chains and workflow representation.

In REA, economic agents are assumed to be homines economici, that is rational parties who engage in arms-length commerce with the specific objective of maximizing utility. For a traditional information system, these REA economic agents are representation artifacts (like tuples in a relational database) that model retrospectively the actual behavior of real world parties. However, in certain types of agent-oriented information systems, the software agents become the economic actors themselves, not mere retrospective representation artifacts. This speech will overview current REA research that seeks to build information system prototypes with intelligent software agents that act as homines economici, both in the way their assumptions, goals, and plans are modeled and in the way in which they act on those modeled components as parties in e-commerce.

 

 

 

 

 THE USE OF A NEURAL NETWORK IN THE PREDICTION OF THE IBEX-35 STOCK INDEX

Juan José Molero López . Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

Francisco Javier Sevillano Martín. Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Piedad Tolmos Rodríguez-Piñero. Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

 

This document aims to seek a useful tool for the predictive analysis of the stock market, particularly the index of the continuous market of the Spanish Stock Market, Ibex-35. In order to accomplish this, we have used the technology outlined by the neuronal networks, for we consider them to be interesting forecast techniques.

Two forecasts have been made. The first one, made in December of last year, for the first quarter of the year 2000, and the second forecast, made in late May, for the months of June, July and August of this year.

The neuronal network used, Perceptron, has been trained with the real data originating from the Stock Market using different periods of time and making changes in the parameters that condition the capacity of prediction of the network. The results of the first quarter have been contrasted with the real data, studying the deviations found and attempting to justify them. The results of the second period, which will be contrasted after August, are to be set forth at the congress meetings.

Contact address: Juan José Molero López, Facultad Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Paseo de los Artilleros s/n, Madrid 28032, Spain.

E-mail:jjmolero@poseidon.fcjs.urjc.es

 

 

 

 

 

 Personalizing Financial Interactions using WEB Mining

Maurice D. Mulvenna, Tony de Bree, Sarabjot S. Anand

Alex G. Büchner & Matthias Baumgarten

MINEit Software

5a Edgewater Office Park, Belfast, Northern Ireland

ABN AMRO Bank N.V.

Gustav Mahlerlaan, 10, Amsterdam 1082PP

NIKEL

Faculty of Informatics, University of Ulster, Shore Road, Newtownabbey Northern Ireland

The web is fast maturing into an important marketing medium that provides businesses and individuals alike with the ability to undertake one-to-one marketing and provide personalised services to their customers both from a traditional supplier as from a new self-service perspective.

In this paper we describe innovative Web Intelligence research in the CERENA project, that provides marketers and eventuallu customers and visitors in e-finance with access to data mining technology that can sift through large amounts of data collected automatically on customer interaction with the businesses web site. The technical objective of CERENA is to bring to light marketing knowledge that is mutually useful to the financial institution and to their customers.

Section 2 describes the background to the project, and places the research in context. Section 3 defines web intelligence, while section 4 describes web mining components within the framework of web intelligence. In section 5, the web interactional components are described. Section 6 discusses the use of web intelligence in the new financial services arena.

 

 

 

 COMPANY CLASSIFICATION AND BANKRUPTCY PREDICTION MODELS: AN APPLICATION TO CHILEAN COMPANIES

Gianni A. Romani Chocce, Ph.D

Patricio Aroca González, Ph.D

Nelson Aguirre Aguirre

Paola Leiton Vega

Javier Muñoz Carrazana

Departamento de Ciencias Empresariales.

Universidad Católica del Norte. Chile.

Company classification and bankruptcy prediction is a topic widely dealt with at international level. However, there are few studies related to Chilean companies. The aim of this study is to identify the model that classifies and predicts the bankruptcy of Chilean Companies with greater reliability. For this purpose, three models commonly used are compared: Multiple Discriminant Analysis (MDA), Logistical Regression (LOGIT) and Neural Networks (NN), by using different financial indexes, macroeconomic variables and other control variables.

The models were applied to a sample of 98 companies chosen at random, with unrestricted line of business, 49 of which were bankrupt and 49 were not. Results show that, even though the Neural Network pattern proved better that both the MDA and LOGIT models as to classification and prediction, other tools are required to determine the optimum set of variables to use.

 

 

 

 

 Control and audit of object oriented systems

Kaustav Sen

Department of Accounting

Pace University, New York

This paper discusses features of the object-oriented environment that can help auditors implement better control over logical threats to the system. It first discusses the notion of control from an auditor’s perspective and the control guidelines developed by ISACF on net-centric computing. Then it explains the object-oriented concepts of encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism and their relevance to the auditor. Finally, it presents the meta-object protocol and discusses how it can be useful as an audit tool for logical threats. A relevant example is provided to illustrate the use of these concepts.

 

 

 ARE SPANISH COMPANIES MAKING USE OF THE WEB FOR FINANCIAL REPORTING? An evolutionary analysis

Sevillano Martin, Fco. Javier

Complutense University Of Madrid. Spain

Molero López, Juan José

Rey Juan Carlos University. Madrid. Spain

Spanish stock markets are now undergoing an important process of reformation for a number of reasons, namely the application for quotation of companies in the so-called new technologies sector; big merging processes which will allow expansion abroad, especially in Latin American countries, with a high level of investment; and a steadily stricter control of the market by regulatory organizations in an attempt to protect investors trading in it.

Having to raise funds in a relatively small market as compared to the global business environment, Spanish corporations are forced to take time and significant effort to disseminate information, the Internet proving a vital vehicle for investor information in our opinion. Also, as the information they provide to regulators is public in nature, they feel more encouraged to make use of their Web presence to carry out that vital dissemination of financial reporting information.

This report discusses the presence on the Web of Spanish corporations listed on Madrid Stock Exchange as well as presenting the results of a survey of 195 companies carried out in June 2000 in order to determine not only the nature of their Web presence but also that of the financial information with which analysts and their various stakeholders are provided. Such factors as whether the Web site facilitates stakeholders communication of a more personal nature (e.g. in electronic or written form, telephone, fax details, etc.), the formats in which information is presented on line, and whether information is updated periodically have also been taken into account. As for the last point above, it is worth noting that our attention has been focused mainly on information generated in the first quarter of 2000.

 

 

 Approaching an Enterprise Knowledge Portal for Public Transportation BusinessES

Dr. Hermann Siebdrat

Department of Information Systems

University of Siegen / Germany

Access to accurate and timely information has become vital for public transportation companies in the liberalized European markets. This information must be gathered from various systems and sources, and stored and organized so it is easily accessible to those who need it. The paper describes the approach for using Enterprise Knowledge Portal technology as a further development of different other techniques like data warehousing, data mining, business intelligence and expert systems to support transportation production as well as marketing and sales processes with the management of information based on predefined rules, business rules and organizational roles.

 

 

 

 

 THE EMERGING ELECTRONIC BUSINESS REPORTING LANGUAGE XBRL

Liv A. Watson, Dr. Brian L. McGuire, CPA and Eric E. Cohen, CPA

The accounting industry is excited about the new emerging business reporting language called "eXtensible Business Reporting Language" (XBRL). XBRL provides a missing link, or bridge, for communicating financial information easily, quickly, and efficiently.

Successful businesses have learned how to leverage the power of financial information. These businesses have set up intranets, extranets, and corporate Web sites in an effort to help employees, investors, and financial analysts tap securely into the company's knowledge base of financial reporting. Until XBRL, however, an important ingredient was missing--the ability to describe financial information and data structures efficiently and consistently over a network. Once XBRL is adopted it will enable organizations to create comprehensive, meaningful and highly customizable financial reports at significant reduced costs in a format compatible with most accounting applications.

Currently, there is no common, generally accepted format for business reporting data. For that reason, the data generally must be either re-entered into computer applications for interpretation, or copied and pasted between applications. XBRL will resolve this problem by allowing content to be created once and distributed over the Internet or effortlessly between applications. XBRL will also be easy to use--anyone, from the CEO to the marketing analyst, will be able to use XBRL to create and distribute his/her own reports. It will be a standard feature financial software applications; not necessarily transparent to the end user, but easy to create, access and use.

 

 

 Predicting Economic Time Series with a Finite Impulse Response Neural Network

1Yañez J. C., 2Borrajo L., 3Corchado J. M.

1Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales. Universidad de Vigo (Ourense)

2E. S. de Ingeniería Informática. Universidad de Vigo (Ourense)

3Dept. de Informática y Automática. Universidad de Salamanca

This paper presents finite response artificial neural network, which is appropriate for financial forecasting and in particular for predicting economic cycles. Its performance is compared with that from a statistical technique and other standard neural network technique. It demonstrates that the unsupervised network outperforms multilayer perceptrons and an ARIMA model on two well-known time series: Japan Stock Market and USA S&P 500

 

 DESING AND APPLICATIONS OF AN INTELLIGENT FINANCIAL REPORTING AND AUDITING AGENT WITH NET KNOWLEDGE (FRAANK).

Alexander Kogan y Miklos Vasarhelyi

Rutgers University

K. Nelson

University of Utah

Rajendra Srivastava

University of Kansas

This paper discusses the use of intelligent Internet agents for expanding financial reporting and audit practices in the virtual world. Intelligent agents are presented as essential tools for automating audit functions in the environment of computerized interconnected enterprises. Several important characteristic features of intelligent agent, includint autonomy, communication ability, collaboration, and mobility are discussed. FRAANK Financial Reporting and Auditing Agent with Net Knowledge is described as an example of an intelligent Internet agent that gathers and analyzes financial information, and as the first step in the direction of creating a universal auditor´s assistant. The informatio collected and analyzed by FRAANK can be provided as a value-added service by auditors to their clients and used by the accounting firm itself in performing the audit function, especially in on-line audits or contunous audits.

 

 

 DECISION TABLES: AN OVERVIEW OF THE EXISTING LITERATURE

Ana María Moreno García

M. Verhelle

Jan Vanthienen

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

The present report contains an overview of the literature on decision tables since its origin. The goal is to analize the dissemination of decision tables in different areas of knowledge, countries and languages, especially showing these that present the most interest on decision table use. In the first part a description of the scope of the overview is given, examining also its evolution. Next, the classification results by topic are explained, as well as the implied areas, the theoretical or practical feature of each document, its origin country and its language. Finally, some comments about this work are added.