Societal consequences of radioactive releases in March 2011 in Japan and implications for the resilience concept

The nuclear accident in Japan in March 2011 was an extreme event and studies of its consequences can offer new insights into long-term effects on society. This study of societal consequences in November 2012 is a follow-up of a previous study of the most important consequences a year earlier. At twenty months after the accident, the radioactive contamination and ensuing need for decontamination still dominates since reconstruction and return of evacuees cannot begin until an area has been decontaminated. Health concerns remain, although extensive screening is under way, and the results so far indicate that the risks for negative effects are low. The costs to society of these and other consequences of the nuclear accident are huge and will continue to grow. The future consequences related to the radioactive substances released in 2011 will develop as a function of the relatively long half-life of cesium-137 (ca. 30 years) and the perception of the situation guiding human and organisational behaviour. Temporal and spatial scales are noticeable in how the consequences have developed. A systems perspective also appears to be valid. These observations are used to explore the definition of resilience by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. This showed that the definition can apply to an extreme disaster, that it constructs resilience as a graded property and that it encompasses both proactive and reactive resilience. However, the underpinning abilities to resist, absorb, accommodate and recover as well as their internal relations need further exploration and discussion. The discussion here shows that examining resilience in relation to a real event can be fruitful for understanding the concept and its definition.     

The consolidation of the financial services industry: Causes,consequences, and implications for the future

This article designs a framework for evaluating the causes, consequences, and future implications of financial services industry consolidation, reviews the extant research literature within the context of this framework (over 250 references), and suggests fruitful avenues for future research. The evidence is consistent with increases in market power from some types of consolidation; improvements in profit efficiency and diversification of risks, but little or no cost efficiency improvement on average; relatively little effect on the availability of services to small customers; potential improvements in payments system efficiency; and potential costs on the financial system from increases in systemic risk or expansion of the financial safety net.     

中国持有美国国债的动因、影响与应变之策

标普下调美国主权信用评级引发全球关于美国国债投资风险的热议,作为美国国债最大的海外官方持有者,我国亦需要加强应对美国国债问题的研究。文章回顾了中国购买美国国债的发展历程,分析了近年来中国加快增持美国国债的成因,在衡量中国持有美国国债的风险与收益的基础上,就控制和规避美国国债风险提出相关政策建议。     

The dynamics in the spot,futures, and call options with basis asymmetries: an intraday analysis in a generalized multivariate GARCH-M MSKST framework

The main purpose of the study is to explore the dynamic relationship among the TAIEX spot, futures, and options markets by proposing an innovative multivariable GARCH-M MSKST (Multivariate Skewed-Student distribution) model. In addition to the considerable feedback effects of these three markets in terms of return transmissions, a significant bidirectional relationship is also found in volatility transmissions between futures and spot markets, and unidirectional spillover occurs from futures to options markets. Specifically, futures are found to exert the most influence on spot and options, and play an important role in disclosing information and pricing discovery to the other two markets. Comparing the magnitude of the effect the positive and negative basis has on spot prices, it is evident that positive basis has a greater impact on the spot market than negative basis does. Of interest, our study shows that positive basis has even more effect than negative basis does on the conditional variance of return on spot and futures.

Envisioning the future for older adults: Autonomy,health, well-being,and social connectedness with technology support

Envisioning the future of older adults of 2050 is a challenging task given the heterogeneity of the older adult population. We consider primarily the domains of home, health, and social participation for individuals over age 65 and the potential role of information, communication, and robotic technology for enhanced independence, maintenance of autonomy, and enriched quality of life. We develop several scenarios to illustrate the diversity of circumstances, health, and living situations for older adults in the future. We discuss possible negative outcomes resulting from the proliferation of technology, including increased social isolation and a widening digital divide. However, we focus primarily on envisioning desired situations wherein older adults have autonomy and independence; are easily able to manage their health and wellness needs; have rich and rewarding opportunities for social connectedness, personal growth, continued life purpose, and overall high quality of life. To attain this future, we must be acting now: designing the technology with involvement by today’s older adults who represent the needs and capabilities of tomorrow’s older adults; developing the necessary infrastructure to support widespread availability and deployment of these technologies; and supporting the integration of technology into people’s lives at younger ages with adaptive functionality to support changing needs and preferences.     

Co-jumps in the U.S. interest rates and precious metals markets and their implications for investors

Using one-minute intraday data and wavelet decomposition of stochastic processes we obtain realised VCOV matrices with and without price discontinuities in the U.S. Treasuries and precious metals futures. Our work provides determinants of co-jumps in gold, silver and U.S. Treasuries across the yield curve and empirically demonstrates impact of price discontinues on hypothetical investor through realised correlations, hedging effectiveness ratios and several portfolio settings. We find that co-jumps in gold and silver have similar monetary characteristics to co-jumps in gold or silver with U.S. Treasuries futures. We further unpack investor choices between precious metals and U.S. bonds under the presence of high-frequency risks. We show that behaviour puzzle of simultaneous demand for safety and quality during market turmoils disappears if investors are seeking maximum diversification. We also find that runs to safety do not offer statistically significant improvements in diversification benefits unlike runs to short-term quality. Other results uncover higher investments to gold due to the shifts in the U.S. yield curve and potential gains in realised hedging effectiveness for the end of the yield curve investors through asymmetry in co-jumps of gold and U.S. Treasuries during periods of extreme market volatility such as beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.     

20 years of studies on the balanced scorecard: Trends,accomplishments, gaps and opportunities for future research

Robert Kaplan and David Norton introduced the Balanced Scorecard in their 1992 Harvard Business Review article. 2012 marks 20 years since that article. This anniversary has motivated me to review the state of research on the balanced scorecard, to highlight gaps in that research and to outline some ideas for further research. To this end, I reviewed 114 articles published in 25 accounting journals and 67 articles in business and management journals in the period 1992–2011. The findings of this literature review are presented in three parts. First, the reviewed articles are categorised by topics, research settings, theories, research method, and primary data analysis techniques. Second, the contributions of research to the field and the lessons learned from these studies are discussed. Third, knowledge gaps in existing balanced scorecard research are identified, leading to consideration of several ideas for future research. The last section offers my final remarks.     

Cointegration,error correction representation and the import demand function with implications in International Finance and Accounting Research

This paper uses the relatively new procedures of cointegration and error-correction modeling to examine the import demand function of three developing economies. The empirical results suggest that the error-correction model performs well and that the poor results of previous studies are attributable to the inappropriate use of the Cochrane-Orcutt procedure and the complete absence of diagnostic testing, especially with respect to parameters stability, autocorrelation, and variable omission.     

The quest for monetary and financial stability: a review of professor Dilip M. Nachane,critique of the new consensus macroeconomics and implications for India

We review Professor Nachane’s book on New Consensus Macroeconomics. The Review argues that such a consensus is possible not at theoretical level, but at policy level, clarifies the link of Keynes’s General Theory to his Treatise, introduced in the book, brings out contributions of Wicksell, Clower, and Schumpeter, missed out in the book, and evaluates the discussion of issues in central banking/financial sector reforms. The book emphasizes monetary/financial stability. We recommend applying a proposal for regulatory veto to securitized bundles of loans issued by different lenders. These represent business or gambling bets rather than theoretically possible aggregation of risks.     

Defining spending reviews: a proposal for a taxonomy,with applications to Italy and the UK

After the 2008 global financial crisis, many governments introduced spending reviews (SRs). The paper provides a valuable definition of the concept of the SR by proposing a taxonomy of the main organizational and methodological aspects involved in the SR process. The paper identifies two different SR models, which feature alternative approaches to cutting back spending. The authors highlight some important considerations when looking to make sustainable and sensible cuts in spending.     

Kalman filter estimation for valuing nontrading securities,with applications to the MMI cash-future spread on October 19 and 20, 1987

The Kalman filter is proposed as a method for estimating the value of nontrading securities during periods when other securities are trading. The method also provides confidence intervals that indicate the degree of uncertainty regarding estimated value. The method is applied to the Major Market Index during the principal days of the 1987 stock market crash. Our results indicate that nonsynchronous trading explains a small but significant portion of the cash-futures spread that prevailed during these days.     

Some issues in blockchain for accounting and the supply chain,with an application of distributed databases to virtual organizations

This paper reviews some recent blockchain‐based applications for information capture, distribution and preservation. As part of that review, this paper examines two key concerns with current blockchain designs for accounting and supply chain transactions: data independence and multiple semantic models for the same information distribution problem. Blockchain applications typically integrate database, application and presentation tiers all in the same ledger. This results in a general inability to query information in the ledger and other concerns. Further, since most applications appear to be private blockchain applications, there is a concern of agents needing to accommodate multiple blockchains depending on who their trading partners are and what they request. Finally, this paper uses a distributed database to design a ‘blockchain‐like’ system for virtual organizations.     

Natural Language Processing in Accounting,Auditing and Finance: A Synthesis of the Literature with a Roadmap for Future Research

Natural language processing (NLP) is a part of the artificial intelligence domain focused on communication between humans and computers. NLP attempts to address the inherent problem that while human communications are often ambiguous and imprecise, computers require unambiguous and precise messages to enable understanding. The accounting, auditing and finance domains frequently put forth textual documents intended to communicate a wide variety of messages, including, but not limited to, corporate financial performance, management's assessment of current and future firm performance, analysts’ assessments of firm performance, domain standards and regulations as well as evidence of compliance with relevant standards and regulations. NLP applications have been used to mine these documents to obtain insights, make inferences and to create additional methodologies and artefacts to advance knowledge in accounting, auditing and finance. This paper synthesizes the extant literature in NLP in accounting, auditing and finance to establish the state of current knowledge and to identify paths for future research. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.