Why Do Politicians Intervene in Accounting Regulation? The Role of Ideology and Special Interests

Politicians frequently intervene in the regulation of financial accounting. Evidence from the accounting literature shows that regulatory capture by special interests helps explain these interventions. However, many accounting rules have broad economic or social consequences, such as their effects on income distribution or private sector subsidies. The perception of these consequences varies with a politician's ideology. Therefore, if accounting rules produce those consequences, ideology plausibly spills over and explains a politician's stance on the technical accounting issue, beyond special interest pressure. We use two prominent U.S. political debates about fair value accounting and the expensing of employee stock options to disentangle the role of ideology from special interest pressure. In both debates, ideology explains politicians’ involvement at exactly those points when the debate focuses on the economic consequences of accounting regulation (i.e., bank bailouts and top management compensation). Once the debates focus on more technical issues, connections to special interests remain the dominant force.     

Factors Influencing Organic and Fair Trade Coffee Growers Level of Engagement with Cooperatives: The Case of Coffee Farmers in Mexico

We study the factors influencing the percentage of organic and fair trade certified coffee sold through a cooperative by growers of five cooperatives in Mexico. The percentage of coffee sold through the cooperative was used as a proxy of growers’ engagement with a cooperative. Using factor analysis and a fractional probit regression, we evaluated the proposition that the level of engagement can be explained by transaction cost economics, social norms and connections, and farmer and farm business characteristics. We found that farm size, uncertainty regarding cooperative time of payment to the members and cooperative commitment on price to be paid negatively influence the level of engagement. In contrast, asset specificity, relational commitment, and price have a positive impact on engagement. Our results may help cooperatives and policy makers to build strategies aiming to increase this level of engagement. This is relevant because lower grower engagement has been found to be positively correlated with weak performing cooperatives.     

Do measurement-related fair value disclosures affect information asymmetry?

Using a sample of European real estate firms over the 2007–2010 period, this study provides some evidence that measurement-related fair value disclosures reduce information asymmetry. We find a negative association between the extent of fair value disclosures and the bid-ask spread, but no association with two additional measures of information asymmetry (zero returns and price impact). Contrary to our expectation, we fail to find evidence that firms using model estimates exclusively benefit the most from such additional disclosure. Analysing measurement errors (the absolute difference between the selling price of an asset and its fair value prior to sale), we find that firms that use model estimates exclusively and provide more measurement-related disclosures have lower errors and more accurate fair value estimates. In other words, if our lack of results is due to investors not using this additional disclosure this is to their detriment.     

Assessing strategic flight schedules at an airport using machine learning-based flight delay and cancellation predictions

To mitigate air traffic demand-capacity imbalances, large European airports implement strategic flight schedules, where flights are assigned arrival/departure slots several months prior to execution. We propose a generic assessment of such strategic schedules using predictions about arrival/departure flight delays and cancellations. We demonstrate our approach for strategic flight schedules in the period 2013–2018 at London Heathrow Airport. Together with the development of dedicated strategic flight schedule optimization models, our proposed approach supports an integrated strategic flight schedule assessment, where schedules are evaluated with respect to flight delays and cancellations.     

Jean Tirole,Nobel Prize Winner

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for 2014 to Jean Tirole, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), Toulouse, France ‘for his analysis of market power and regulation’. What commonly characterizes Jean Tirole's work is a combination of rigorous scientific analysis of markets and provision of useful scientific insights and policy guidance for regulation and competition policy in such markets. This paper focuses on two of Tirole's papers, both co-written with Jean-Charles Rochet, which probably best exemplify his policy-oriented research. It summarizes and then explains how the theory that these papers develop led to the implementation of a new policy regulating the payment card industry in the European Union.     

公允价值会计对财务报表的影响

本文通过比较公允价值会计和传统会计在具体的操作方法和考量范围方面的不同之处,来探讨使用公允价值会计后对财务报告的影响,并对在企业管理的过程中,如何更有效地利用财务报告提出了一些探索性的建议.     

从经适房政策解析政府在社会保障均等化中的角色定位

文章从非受益群体对于经适政策公平性的质疑角度入手,挖掘出导致社会普遍不公平感的更深层次原因,着重体现公民的情感接受,并借助经济学理论,尝试重新定义社会保障公平性原则,以社会保障均等化概念代替社会公平概念来解释经适房政策,从而推进政府角色的进一步转变。     

净现值法在融资租赁决策中的运用

融资租赁作为一种融资手段已经广泛应用于各行业领域，如何对具体的融资租赁项目进行合理、科学的分析和评价，对企业有效降低融资成本、提高资金使用效率有着重要意义。针对某一具体的融资租赁项目而言，租入资产账面价值的确定、租金的支付方式、折旧及摊销的抵税作用等因素都会对该融资项目的现金净流量产生重大影响，进而影响最终决策。     

略论低碳经济的发展向度与意义

低碳经济作为一种新的经济形式,无论是理论研究还是实践探索都呼唤发展哲学的观照。低碳经济作为一种新的发展模式,具有鲜明的低代价发展向度、普世的公正发展向度及强烈的创新发展向度,这对于人类社会的持续发展和文明跃迁具有重大而深远的意义。     

我国套期保值会计发展背景、现状与对策分析

套期保值会计发展的成果主要表现为金融工具会计准则和套期保值会计准则的制定和不断完善。我国套期保值会计理论研究起步晚，主要集中在国内外金融工具准则、套期保值会计准则的解读及对比研究以及套期保值会计理论和套期保值会计准则应用研究等方面。实践中存在套期准则可操作性差，容易导致主观随意、盈余操纵和企业风险意识低、专业人才缺乏等问题。需要结合我国企业风险管理实践，修改现有套期会计准则，颁布操作指南，加强专业人才的培育，不断推进我国套期保值会计的发展。