Comments by the European Accounting Association on the International Accounting Education Standards Board Consultation Paper ‘Meeting Future Expectations of Professional Competence: A Consultation on the IAESB’s Future Strategy and Priorities’

On December 2015, the International Accounting Education Standards Board (IAESB) issued a consultation paper entitled ‘Meeting future expectations of professional competence: A consultation on the IAESB’s future strategy and priorities’. Its aim is ‘to obtain public comment on its vision for the next five years and the strategic priorities it believes need to be addressed in serving the public interest’ [International Accounting Education Standards Board [IAESB]. (2015a). Meeting future expectations of professional competence: A consultation on the IAESB’s future strategy and priorities. Consultation paper. Retrieved from https://www.ifac.org/publications-resources/consultation-paper-meeting-future-expectations-professional-competence, p. 3]. This article reports the answers of the European Accounting Association to the questions asked in the consultation paper. The comments suggest a reinforcement of the entry requirements that would include a proper education background, advanced levels of both some technical competences and interpersonal/communication skills as well as a very strong ethical commitment. They also recommend a more thorough development process for the continuous education of accountants, a stronger link between practitioners and academia, insights for new IESs and more effective communication strategies about IAESB activities.     

Collective Decisional Skill and Decisive Voting Games - Some Results

The paper discusses various representations of collective decisional skill which are useful in the evaluation of decision structures. The recursion formulas we give here and the use of the concepts of majority deficiency as well as majority and unanimity games present expedient approaches in analyzing collective competence. Using the simple majority system as benchmark, applications to certain hierarchic decision structures are presented. The resulting inequalities dealing with collective decisional skills of hierarchic systems are an improvement of previous published results.     

Does vertical integration affect firm performance? Evidence from the airline industry

We investigate the effects of vertical integration on operational performance. Large U.S. airlines use regional partners to operate some of their flights. Regionals may be owned or governed through contracts. We estimate whether an airline's use of an owned, rather than independent, regional at an airport affects delays and cancellations on the airline's own flights out of that airport. We find that integrated airlines perform systematically better than nonintegrated airlines at the same airport on the same day. Furthermore, the performance advantage increases on days with adverse weather and when airports are more congested. These findings suggest that, in this setting, vertical integration may facilitate real‐time adaptation decisions.