Can Simga-Mugan

An assessment of the effects of teaching methods on academic performance of students in accounting courses

This study explores the effect of teaching methods on the academic performance of students in accounting courses. The study was carried out over two semesters at a well‐known university in Turkey in principles of financial accounting and managerial accounting courses. Students enrolled in the courses were assigned to treatment and control groups. Treatment group students solved assigned problems or cases in groups in class, while in the control group the instructor lectured on and solved the problems and cases. The results of the study show that there was no significant difference in the academic performance of the treatment and control group students in either course.

Accounting in Turkey

Turkey is a developing country in the Middle East, and is attracting an increasing number of foreign investments and joint ventures. However, the Turkish accounting system is not one of the topics that is studied in detail, the language barrier perhaps being the main reason. As the amount of foreign investment and the number of joint ventures increase and the Turkish stock market develops, a new responsibility will fall on accountants to disclose and discuss the current accounting system in Turkey. This paper attempts to fill this gap by describing the current accounting system and state of the profession in Turkey.

Convergence to international financial reporting standards: the case of Turkey

In this paper, we discuss the progress in the accounting standards in Turkey and provide some insight into the current accounting system as well as the recent regulatory developments following the convergence attempts to the global set of financial accounting standards that is currently referred to as the International Financial Reporting Standards/International Accounting Standards (IFRS/IAS) in Turkey. The paper emphasises variations from and similarities with the IFRS/IAS and lays out a brief history of global convergence activities. The paper concludes with a discussion of the effects of convergence on the financial reporting and accounting systems of domestic and multinational companies, and audit firms in Turkey.

Privatization in Emerging Markets: The Case of Turkey

This paper discusses the progress and success of the privatization programs in Turkey between 1985 and 1998. The paper discusses the legal developments, privatization methods, and performance of privatized companies and overall success of privatization by comparing the results of privatization with the aims and objectives stated initially. Within this framework, the paper presents the productivity increases or decreases in various privatized state enterprises, discusses the impact on stock market development, and the privatization revenues and cash results. Only 8.3 percent of the large state-owned enterprises have been privatized during this period. Net cash flow generated from the privatization process does not appear to be satisfactory, and the impact on the stock market and the economy is not very impressive. Turkey still needs to privatize its largest state-owned enterprises in order to realize the full effects of the privatization program.

A commentary on “Why DCF capital budgeting is bad for business and why business schools should stop teaching it”

As the title suggests, Adler (2006) starts with describing the constant struggle of educators to revise the contents of accounting courses as a response to the demands of the changing global economic environment. Adler thoroughly discusses the thought process educators go through. Eventually, he claims that DCF should be eliminated from accounting course curricula to make space for more ‘relevant’ topics, but such topics are not elicited. My commentary is organized on three points: my response to deleting DCF from the course contents; new topics that could be introduced; and my candidate topics for elimination. My first reaction is that Adler offers a very well written, well-developed paper. He forces the reader to think about the issue. Adler argues that topics covered in classrooms are shaped according to the needs of the practice through professional bodies that influence the institutions and educators. Though I fully support this view, I should like to expand it to cover economic and technological developments. The results of innovative and in some cases creative financial practices necessitated changes in accounting rules and regulations. Accounting bodies were in some way followers, not leaders. Following this line of thought, educators follow the professional bodies to provide answers to their questions or to meet their demands. Since it is not relevant for the purposes of this commentary, I will not go into a discussion of the desirability of such a situation. Yet I cannot refrain from posing the following question. Do we, as educators, want to be in this position? I fully agree with Adler’s discussion regarding ‘ever-expanding’ topics. Clearly, some of the issues we cover in accounting courses in the current decade were non-existent in the 1980s. Similarly, some topics that were in fashion in that era are covered in a short paragraph in a chapter or never covered at all today. For example, the topic of inflation accounting has disappeared altogether from accounting textbooks in the USA. What I am trying to say is that topics covered in accounting will take their own course as demanded by the changing economic conditions. Thus, I do agree that some topics will fade as demands change. I believe that the DCF model has not reached that point yet because it is still usable in certain cases. My disagreement with Adler starts when he states his first choice for the topics to be excluded from course contents. His strong argument centres around the concept that Accounting Education: an international journal Vol. 15, No. 1, 21–23, March 2006

An investigation of the short- and long-term relationships between Turkish financial markets ∗

In recent years the importance of emerging stock exchanges has been demonstrated by the number of market studies. Although some of these stock exchanges such as those of Korea and Taiwan have been investigated extensively, there is only limited research on others including the Turkish stock exchange. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating the short- and long-term relationship between Turkish stock prices, and the Turkish lira price of the US dollar. Turkish investors view both of these instruments as investments. The exchange offices in Turkey serve investors who continuously buy and sell foreign currencies. We expect that at least one market would cause the other one, and there could be a feedback relation or in the extreme case, there could even be long-run equilibrium between these two markets. Data for this study are obtained from a foreign exchange office and the Istanbul Stock Exchange for the period January 1988 to December 1994. The data consist of daily closing prices of the Istanbul Stock Exchange index, and the closing ask price of the US dollar. Unit root tests indicate that both series are nonstationary as 1(1). The results show that a long-run equilibrium does not exist, however, the foreign exchange market causes the stock market in the Granger sense.

Growing tendency to harmonisation with IFRS: some evidences from Turkey

Motivated by the recent developments in accounting regulations, we explore the tendency of countries to converge to IFRS for both public and private companies and present some evidence on the issue from an emerging market. We explore how the legal system – civil vs. common law – and the stock market development stage in a country affects the acceptance of IFRS by the regulators. We find that stock market influences the acceptance of IFRS for both public and private companies while the legal system affects the requirement of IFRS for the private companies. In Turkey, different regulatory bodies control different types of companies. Capital Markets Board that controls the listed companies issued the first set of translated IFRS in 2003. Established in 2002, Turkish Accounting Standards Board (TASB) is responsible to translate and issue the international accounting standards. Examination of issue and effective dates of both standards reveals that TASB closely follows the IASB efforts.

Winds of change in accounting practices in an emerging market: some observations and thoughts

In Turkey, publicly traded companies are required to comply with a new set of standards that are essentially similar to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) since 2005. In this study, we use the results of a survey carried out in Turkey with accounting or finance executives of publicly traded companies regarding their perceptions of the new set of standards and their expectations from the policy makers, compare the findings of global research with the survey results, and report our observations and opinion. The survey results suggest that there was lack of knowledge and experience for appropriate implementation – a common point raised globally as well. Early observations and findings reflect that, although a lot has been achieved on the way to convergence, more consensus and guidance from the national and international standard setters are necessary to fully realise the expected benefits of IFRS.