Discovering the ‘international’ in accounting and finance

As higher education in accounting and finance moves increasingly in the direction of internationalisation of degree programmes and student populations, this paper reflects on the ways in which contemporary research contributes to the academic community's understanding of the rich potential of evidence available on international convergence and diversity.Reviews of research published in recent years have pointed to strong parochiality in the research questions and data choices of many researchers. This paper looks for a meta-structure of cross-sectional international comparisons across a range of papers at one point in time. Research papers of 2005 are selected from eight journals giving a broad coverage of subject matter.A cultural framework is proposed as a basis for an ethnographic view of the data and findings of empirical research papers. Cultural diversity is found as an explicit discussion in some papers but others are silent or even apologetic for cultural differences.Country-specific studies reveal the potential for comparative studies on a wider geographical basis but the achievement of such an aim will require the academic research community (editors, reviewers and authors) to show flexibility in dealing with smaller data sets and greater uncertainty about the nature of accounting information. Most importantly this review shows the considerable wealth of interest waiting for those who take time to peruse academic journals.     

The role of international banking in the ‘oil surplus’ adjustment process

In the rapidly changing and dramatically volatile oil market in which the balances of payments of the various countries are characterized by an unpreeendented variability, the role of international banks in the intermediations between countries, has been crucial. The stabilization function of the banking system which is instrumental in allowing a more rational oil production policy and investment policy has been since 1980 under considerable stress due to a decline of deposits. In this paper we shall first analyze the general framework of the problem and then the specific decision process of the banking system by emphasizing the differences between micro- and macroeconomic aspects.