Recent accounting and finance education literature indicates a trend towards an increasing use of case studies. The literature in this field is primarily descriptive, with no empirical evidence on the use or effectiveness of the method. This study examines students' perceptions of the use of case studies and the potential influences of gender and prior academic performance on such perceptions. The study focuses, in particular, on students' perceptions about whether case studies develop particular skills suggested in the literature. The questionnaire-based study was conducted in a postgraduate (Honours) class at a South African university. Analyses of the results reveal significant differences in students' perceptions of the benefits of the use of cases. Gender and prior academic performance-based differences in perception were also found. The study is useful for educators who use, or intend to use, case studies, as it highlights issues, such as the learning objectives of the course, which need to be addressed prior to curriculum design.Case Studies Student Perceptions Skills Knowledge Gender Prior Academic Performance,

This article investigates the effect of the Financial Reporting Act of 1993 (FRA) on mandatory disclosure practices of companies listed on the New Zealand Exchange Limited. The FRA gave statutory backing to financial reporting standards in New Zealand and made non-compliance illegal. Using both univariate and multivariate analyses, we examine the association between (a) the levels of compliance with mandatory disclosure by the companies in our sample, and (b) disclosure regulatory regimes that prevailed in New Zealand before and after the implementation of the FRA. We find that mean corporate disclosure compliance levels in the periods after the enactment of the FRA are significantly higher than those in the periods before the enactment of the legislation. After controlling for the effects of other mandatory disclosure-related variables documented in prior studies, we also find that the improvement in corporate disclosure compliance behaviour is the result of the implementation of the FRA. Alternative specifications of the primary regression model indicate that those findings are robust.

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We investigate the relative value relevance of the alternative accounting methods for unrealized gains on investment properties in New Zealand (NZ). Using both the Likelihood-ratio test and the F-test, we find that, while preferred by the NZ standard setter, recognition of unrealized gains in the income statement is not superior to (or significantly different from) recognition of unrealized gains in revaluation reserve in terms of their value relevance. The results are robust to the different research methods we used. Our results have implications for the International Accounting Standards Board in terms of: (i) recognizing changes in fair values of investment properties in the income statement under the revised IAS 40: Investment Property in countries where ''realization'' refers to net income available for distribution; (ii) its intent to issue a standard on a single statement of comprehensive income; and (iii) its initiative to reduce or eliminate alternative accounting treatments for similar fact situations in its standards.