Scope of improvement in water usage efficiency in manual dishwashing: A multicountry study by questionnaire survey

Over recent decades, water conservation have become increasingly an utmost important issue for debate, and this includes the domestic sector. Reducing demand water by improving the efficiency of water use in domestic sector requires an understanding of how water is used and in what ways water savings can be realized. The focus of this global, web‐based, consumer questionnaire survey was to analyze individual consumer attitudes towards using water in manual dishwashing and understand the likelihood of a prospect of changing the daily manual dishwashing method resulting to a more efficient domestic usage of water. This study was designed to investigate the manual dishwashing technique used in the 5249 households of nine different countries ‐ China, Germany, Italy, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, India, South Africa and Argentina. Besides socio‐demographics, technical questions like cleaning steps, hygiene questions motivational question, environmental awareness questions, questions on payment for water and electricity, questions on information sources about household work were included in the study. It was found that the awareness to conserve water was common among the Asian participants but it necessarily was not practiced in the households as individual washing of dishes was found to be quite high. Among the many outcomes, important one was that ‘running tap method’ was found to be most prevalent (86%) among Russian participants, complimenting their detached approach towards conserving domestic water usage. In South American countries like Brazil (66%) and Argentina (51%), high occurrence of ‘running tap rinse’ was found to be a common practice, confirming the lack of conscious use of water in manual dishwashing in the subcontinent. Based on the overall responses, awareness of a new and efficient technique of manual dishwashing could be propagated through the most voted mediums of Internet (81%) and TV (69%).     

Endogenous Future Preferences and Conservation

A dynamic optimization model is developed in whichuncertainty about future preferences is endogenous,namely depending on the state of the environment atthe time the change in preferences occurs.Endogeneizing preferences not only provides economicintuition to previous results but also implies thatoptimal policies are less conservative.     

Non-compliant behaviour in public procurement: an evolutionary model with endogenous monitoring

Decisions in Economics and Finance - In recent years, the study of the evolution of non-compliant behaviour in public procurement has been widely developed due to the growing economic relevance of...     

Comparability in IPSASs: Lessons to be Learned for the European Standards

Abstract

In 2013 the European Commission started addressing issues concerning public sector accounting harmonization across EU Member States, embarking on a project to develop European Public Sector Accounting Standards (EPSASs). Although acknowledging the indisputable reference of the existing International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs), it highlighted that IPSASs, as they were, could not be suitably applied in the EU context (European Commission, 2013a). IPSASs were considered as not covering specific important matters of public sector accounting, not showing enough stability due to the need of constant convergence with IFRSs, and offering several options that compromised comparability.

Comparability of public sector accounts across Member States is one of the main objectives of EPSASs (EUROSTAT, 2016, 2019), clearly established as a qualitative characteristic in the draft EPSAS Conceptual Framework (EUROSTAT, 2018). It is critical for EU economic and fiscal convergence that countries’ accounts allow for substantial comparison and standardized transition to the National Accounts (Jorge et al., 2014).

The IPSAS Conceptual Framework (IPSASB, 2014), meanwhile issued, sustains that adopting these standards would improve comparability of General Purpose Financial Reporting (GPFR), in this way strengthening transparency and accountability of public sector finance.

Given that, despite the above concerns, EPSASs are to be developed on the basis of IPSASs (European Commission, 2019), the purpose of this paper is to show that IPSASs are not an adequate reference for EPSASs in terms of allowing the desired comparability of countries’ accounts in the EU. It relies on evidence gathered from IPSAS-based financial reports prepared by some Agencies of the United Nations System and from audit reports of the UN Board of Auditors.

The research illustrates that IPSASs only allow for de jure comparability of financial reports at a very broad level. Their implementation and interpretation in practice (due to the options permitted and the judgement required) does not allow for de facto comparable GPFR. European standard-setters need to be aware that the comparability EPSASs need to address across EU Member States’ accounts must go beyond the one that is permitted by IPSASs – EPSASs need to stretch IPSASs harmonization to a higher level of standardization.     

Global consumer study to identify water wastage in the usage of automatic dishwashers

In dishcleaning automatic dishwashers do clearly win over manual cleaning when it comes to efficiency: Resources can be saved without compromising on hygiene. But mistakes in the usage behaviour can equalize saving advantages. Consumers in nine countries, covering different regions of the world, were asked about their dishcleaning behaviour to identify if this household work is done in a resource saving way. By analysing mistakes in the current behaviour, the potential of water savings shall be estimated.     

Science,technology, innovation,theory and evidence: the new institutionality in Colombia

Quality & Quantity - It is widely recognized that the design and application of suitable and robust science, technology and innovation (STI) policies and appropriate STI institutions promote...     

The market for lawyers and quality layers in legal services

We study the functioning of the market for lawyers, considering the strategic interaction among litigants, lawyers, and judges. We investigate the value of legal representation and of systems of quality certification, such as the Queen’s Counsel system. In our setting, higher quality lawyers obtain better‐quality evidence and are better able to interpret it. Judges receive information from the lawyers and have reputational concerns. We show that reputational concerns generate a decision bias in favor of certified lawyers and that this causes misallocation of lawyers at the market equilibrium. As a result, whereas a higher quality of lawyers increases welfare, public information over quality may be welfare reducing.     

On the ‘Disclosure Initiative – Principles of Disclosure’: The EAA Financial Reporting Standards Committee’s View

Abstract

This paper summarises the contents of a comment letter produced by a working group of 12 academics in response to the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) Discussion Paper on principles of disclosure. The comment letter was submitted by the Financial Reporting Standards Committee (FRSC) of the European Accounting Association (EAA). The work includes reviews of relevant academic literature of areas related to the various questions posed by the IASB in the Discussion Paper, including the ‘disclosure problem’ and the objective of the project, the suggested principles of effective communication, the roles of the primary financial statements and notes, the location of information and the use of performance measures. The paper also discusses the disclosure of accounting policies, the objectives of centralised disclosure, and the New Zealand Accounting Standards Board staff’s approach to disclosure.     

Impact of Low‐Skilled Immigration on Female Labour Supply

In this paper, segmenting the market by educational levels, we investigate which native‐born women are more affected by an increase of low‐skilled immigrants working in the household service sector. We present a model of individual choice with home production and, using a harmonized dataset (the Cross‐National Equivalent File), we estimate its main comparative static results. The results suggest that the share of immigrants working in services is positively associated with an increase of native‐born women's labour supply at the intensive margin, if skilled, and at the extensive margin, if unskilled. Moreover, the results show that these effects are larger in countries with less‐supportive family policies.