Accounting and Finance Dissertations and Theses

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Characteristics of firms which capitalise development expenditures
(2006) Wang, Baojun; Unitec Institute of Technology
This project investigates the characteristics of firms in New Zealand who choose to expense versus capitalise expenditures for internally generated development projects. Using a sample of 315 NZ firm-year observations, I find that the decision to expense versus capitalize is influenced by profitability, financial health and intensity of a firm’s research and development (R&D) programme. Firms which capitalise R&D are smaller, less profitable, more likely to be in financial distress, and have higher intensity R&D programs. These results suggest that New Zealand firms are similar to firms in other countries who seem to make choices among accounting alternatives in a way to manage reported earnings
Impression management in financial reports surrounding CEO turnover
(2009) Goundar, Nadesa; Unitec Institute of Technology
This study focuses on whether new management uses impression management to influence the presentation of performance in the firm’s annual reports surrounding a changeover in CEO. The study considers the use or non-use of graphs for presenting information as well as distortions in the graphs. Overall there is some evidence for impression management, but it is not strong. Thus impression management as implemented through graphs does not appear to be used as widely in New Zealand as in other jurisdictions where it has been studied.