On the ‘Disclosure Initiative – Principles of Disclosure’: The EAA Financial Reporting Standards Committee’s View

Abstract

This paper summarises the contents of a comment letter produced by a working group of 12 academics in response to the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) Discussion Paper on principles of disclosure. The comment letter was submitted by the Financial Reporting Standards Committee (FRSC) of the European Accounting Association (EAA). The work includes reviews of relevant academic literature of areas related to the various questions posed by the IASB in the Discussion Paper, including the ‘disclosure problem’ and the objective of the project, the suggested principles of effective communication, the roles of the primary financial statements and notes, the location of information and the use of performance measures. The paper also discusses the disclosure of accounting policies, the objectives of centralised disclosure, and the New Zealand Accounting Standards Board staff’s approach to disclosure.     

The Renaissance of Geopolitics in Post-1989 Italy

The revival of geopolitics in post-1989 Italy is at once a rather straightforward and perplexing matter. On the one hand, the renewed appeal that geopolitical thinking has enjoyed in International Relations (IR) circles has been well documented and could hardly be downplayed. On the other hand, however, the recourse to geopolitics has often boiled down to an undifferentiated and often convoluted use of its terms, approaches and theories. In this article we argue that the rationale of such a revival has been less to import geopolitical knowledge into IR and more to confer legitimacy and respectability to the analyses put forward by scholars and practitioners. It is no chance, in fact, that the geopolitics-inspired academic discourse has been progressively recognised as a way, if not the way, to discuss international affairs in post-1989 Italy. The central puzzle to be investigated behind the revival of geopolitics in Italy is thus how such a discourse has managed to gain and retain a powerful status in Italian IR academia and, most importantly, why.     

Does Branch Religiosity Influence Bank Risk‐Taking?

Using branch‐level data on public and private US banking institutions, we investigate the importance of branch religiosity in shaping bank risk‐taking behavior. Our results show robust evidence that branch religiosity is negatively related to bank risk‐taking. This effect persists after controlling for several bank‐level and county‐level variables that might correlate with religiosity. Moreover, this result is robust to controlling for headquarter religiosity, suggesting that the effect of branch religiosity is additive and not washed out by headquarter religiosity. Overall, our findings document that headquarter religiosity does not capture the full effect of religiosity on bank behavior, as claimed by previous research, but that the religiosity of the geographic area in which the bank operates significantly influences bank behavior.     

Leader–member exchange,affective commitment,engagement, wellbeing,and intention to leave: public versus private sector Italian nurses

In the context of nurse shortages and budget constraints in hospitals, retaining skilled nurses is crucial. This paper investigates the impact of supervisor–nurse relationships on engagement, wellbeing, affective commitment and turnover intention for Italian private and public sector nurses. Private sector nurses in Italy were found to be more committed, engaged and had higher perceptions of wellbeing than public sector nurses. Based on these results, public managers need to do more to sustain the motivation of nurses in public sector hospitals.     

The auctioneerless economics of Axel Leijonhufvud: the 'dark forces of time and ignorance' and the coordination of economic activity

Leijonhufvud focuses his analysis on the coordination of economicactivities. In a world tossed and torn by ever new episodesof instability, macroeconomic theory must finally admit andproperly analyse the limits of collective and individual rationality.Starting from the system's coordination, Leijonhufvud underlinesthe crucial role of information, learning and institutions.Coming to individual choice, he unremittingly rejects unboundedrationality. Methodologically, however, his use of general equilibriumas a benchmark seems to have conditioned his analysis. In bringingto light the ‘dark forces of time and ignorance’,Leijonhufvud himself seems to have fallen under the influenceof the siren represented by general equilibrium theory.