European congresses of accounting: a review of their history

The history and scientific development of many professions can be studied from the evidence of their annual or occasional conventions. Typically professions originated in major towns and were brought together nationally through state recognition. Subsequently and especially in the twentieth century, international links and co-ordinating professional bodies have been founded.

The accountancy profession has gone through these stages. The processes for national recognition and for statutory powers have been well studied. Less attention has been given, however, to the agendas and effectiveness of accountants' congresses at national, European and international level. Evidence has been available on an American conference in 1904; and this has been declared the first of a series of international accounting congresses which continues today. More frequent and more international congresses based in Europe (and in Brussels in particular) deserve attention now, such as has been denied them for some fifty years.

The present review is based largely on secondary sources; but it shows the aims of European conferences, which were often occasioned by international expositions, and which evolved from the qualified success of national accountants' conventions. The achievements of congresses are also discussed, in relation to agendas which reveal contrasting expectancies from state intervention and an inverse defence of professional freedoms. The views expressed by accountants differ according to their country of origin and to changing economic climates and conflicting political views. Continental European accountants rather often betray some envy of the state recognition and protection accorded to British chartered accountants.     

Permanent-transitory Decomposition in Var Models With Cointegration and Common Cycles

In this paper we derive permanent-transitory decompositions of non-stationary multiple times series generated by (r)nite order Gaussian VAR(p) models with both cointegration and serial correlation common features. We extend existing analyses to the two classes of reduced rank structures discussed in Hecq, Palm and Urbain (1998). Using the corresponding state space representation of cointegrated VAR models in vector error correction form we show how decomposition can be obtained even in the case where the number of common feature and cointegration vectors are not equal to the number of variables. As empirical analysis of US business fluctuations shows the practical relevance of the approach we propose.     

Habermas and information systems research: New directions

Habermas' critical social theory has proven to be an important and useful lens in information systems research, especially in understanding the communicative potential of information systems and in conceiving alternative approaches to information systems development. As communication and engagement have become increasingly important in the context of today's information systems, his work has perhaps even greater applicability. However, concerns that it is too utopian to apply in organizational settings have led to skepticism regarding Habermas' work. Participation by all, the “ideal speech situation” and the consensus ideal are each Habermasian requirements that have sparked this criticism.However, Habermas' work has continued to grow and evolve since the Theory of Communicative Action, the basis of much IS research drawing on his work. His contributions in discourse ethics (1990, 1993) and deliberative democracy (1998) have offered us new and important theory, and have brought to light Habermas' own clarification and evolution of his original ideas.The intent of this paper is to reopen a communicative dialog about Habermas' work. After summarizing his critical social theory, we turn to addressing our two main objectives: first, to demonstrate that evolutions in Habermasian thought have renewed its empirical possibilities and, second, to show that this new understanding constructively informs future IS research. As an illustration, we sketch out the conditions for a Habermasian-inspired requirements process and show their application to a well-studied IS development model, ETHICS (Mumford, 1983). We conclude by suggesting that Habermas' theoretical ideas can no longer be dismissed as naive, but as a constant guide to critical action — as a reference point for opening up new possibilities for communicative action in IS research and activity.     

Correction to: Inside Buchanan’s Samaritan’s Dilemma: altruism,strategic courage and ethics of responsibility

Economics of Governance - The Samaritan’s Dilemma has largely been investigated, frequently by assuming that Samaritans help recipients out of altruism. Yet, Buchanan did not make any...     

Dynamic mean–variance problem with frictions

Finance and Stochastics - We study a dynamic mean–variance portfolio selection problem with return predictability and trading frictions from price impact. Applying mean-field type control...