Comparing Professions in UK and German-Speaking Management Accounting

This paper studies professional education in management accounting and the ways in which management accounting professions establish jurisdictional claims about management accounting work in the UK and German-speaking countries, respectively. We adopt a comparative approach drawing on the framework of systems of professions and the distinction between public, legal and workplace jurisdiction [Abbott, A. (1988 Abbott, A. (1988). The system of professions: An essay on the division of expert labor. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). The system of professions: An essay on the division of expert labor. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press]. Our findings highlight some notable differences between the UK and German-speaking countries with respect to professional management accounting education, the jurisdictional claims that the professions make as well as the establishment and history of professional institutes for management accounting. Based on this analysis, the paper identifies a dilemma or at least a challenge for policy-makers with respect to balancing the need for a context-dependent model of professional education with a need for comparability and convergence.     

Do cross-country differences in bank efficiency support a policy of “national champions”?

As banking consolidation proceeds and Europe moves toward a single market, cross-country differences in banking efficiency can affect the future competitive position of a country’s financial market, helping to determine which European money centers may expand or contract. Looking at large banks across 10 countries, we find they are roughly equally efficient after controlling for differences in business environment, banking costs, and bank productivity. As no country seems to have a strong efficiency advantage, it seems likely that state efforts to promote “national champions” through favorable mergers which expand scale and market share may determine the outcome.     

The effects of works councils on overtime hours

This study analyzes the relation between works councils and overtime hours in Germany. The estimated effects differ considerably in dependence of standard contracted working time. Furthermore, we find differences across the quantiles of the overtime hours distribution and these differences between quantiles also vary between employees of establishment with and without works councils. By considering contracted working time effects and comparing conditional quantiles we find in some quantiles that employees of establishments with a works council have a higher amount of overtime hours if an employee regularly works 35 hours per week. This effect diminishes with increasing quantiles of the distribution of overtime hours. If an employee of a codetermined establishment regularly works 40 hours per week, overtime hours are reduced. This reduction becomes larger if higher quantiles are analyzed.     

Some unpleasant currency-devaluation arithmetic in a post Keynesian macromodel

The conventional view argues that devaluation increases the price competitiveness of domestic goods, thus allowing the economy to achieve a higher level of economic activity. However, these theoretical treatments largely neglect two important effects following devaluation: (1) the inflationary impact on the price of imported intermediate inputs, which raises the prime costs of firms and deteriorates partially or totally their price competitiveness; and (2) the redistribution of income from wages to profits, which ambiguously affects the aggregate demand as workers and capitalists have different propensities to save. New structuralist economists have explored these stylized facts neglected by the orthodox literature and, by and large, conclude that devaluation has contractionary effects on growth and positive effects on the external balance. Given that empirical evidence on the correlation between devaluation and growth is quite mixed, we develop a more general Keynesian–Kaleckian model that takes into account both opposing views in order to analyze the net impact of currency depreciation on the short-run growth rate and the current account. We demonstrate that this impact can go either way, depending on several conditions such as the type of growth regime, that is, wage-led or profit-led, and the degree of international price competitiveness of domestic goods.     

Does the Degree of Development Matter in the Impact of Banking Crises on International Trade?

This paper analyzes how a country's degree of economic development affects the impact of banking crises on international trade. To this end, we estimate a gravity model of trade using a sample of 139 countries over the period 1975–2012. Our results show that middle income countries are generally the most negatively affected. In contrast, financial turmoil appears to have less impact on bilateral trade flows among high income countries and, more specially, among low income nations. The level of financial development, contract enforcement, as well as the extent of the use of banking credit within international trade all help to explain our findings.     

Political Commodities and Sovereignty Management: Cigarette Smuggling across Brazil’s Southern Borders

Cigarette smuggling across Brazil’s borders with Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina involves large amounts of merchandise and money. The public in Brazil associates this activity with images of war, contamination and other threats to state sovereignty. This article assesses the political meaning and uses of smuggling in order to challenge the assumption that smuggling threatens the sovereignty of the Brazilian state. With the help of a literature review, fieldwork at the border, interviews with practitioners, a cartographic analysis of news coverage of seizures, the tobacco production and consumption, the market and its regulation, actors, routes and networks were mapped and analysed. In the Southern Cone of South America, an integrated transborder territory emerges where tobacco is cultivated, prepared and distributed, and cigarettes are manufactured, transported, sold and smoked. These flows cross distinct legal framings and lead to an increase in danger and profit. Thus, the market is segmented between national legal products and imported cigarettes that are cheaper and illegal but easily obtainable. The concepts of political commodities understood as the acts of powerful agents who barter advantages related to their authority and sovereignty management, understood as the use of legal (state-managed) structures according to private interests at different scale levels, provide useful theoretical tools to examine the territorialisation of the cigarette smuggling and its control by the state and private agents. We conclude that tobacco production and trade, as well as cigarette smuggling, are connected via agents who use the border to build the legal market and, consequently, to increase the trade value of national tobacco. Cigarette smuggling across the state borders of the Southern Cone combines networks and places in such a way that is integrated into the legal economy and the national territories, and it does not defy state’s sovereignty.     

Agency Problems and Dividend Policies around the World

This paper outlines and tests two agency models of dividends. According to the "outcome model," dividends are paid because minority shareholders pressure corporate insiders to disgorge cash. According to the "substitute model," insiders interested in issuing equity in the future pay dividends to establish a reputation for decent treatment of minority shareholders. The first model predicts that stronger minority shareholder rights should be associated with higher dividend payouts; the second model predicts the opposite. Tests on a cross section of 4,000 companies from 33 countries with different levels of minority shareholder rights support the outcome agency model of dividends.     

Product Differentiation and Process R&D: The Trade-off Between Quality and Productivity in the Spanish Firm

This paper proposes a theoretical model in which the incentives that product differentiation exercises on process innovation are established. The resulting quadratic relationship determines a point beyond which a trade-off between these two variables exists. The estimations based on a panel data of Spanish manufacturing firms confirm this result. Moreover, firm size seems to play a important role on process innovation only for those firms with a certain degree of product differentiation. For the rest, the degree of differentiation of rival firms is the relevant variable.     

Accounting and international relations: Britain,Spain and the Asiento treaty

The boundaries between accounting and law are contingent on time–space intersections. Here, these margins are explored in the realm of international relations by focusing on the Asiento, an 18th century treaty granting Britain the monopoly to trade slaves with the Spanish American colonies. Although a relatively minor concern of treaty-makers, noncompliance with provisions of the Asiento by the South Sea Company placed accounting centre stage in conflicts between Britain and Spain. In combination with geo-strategic and domestic political circumstances, reporting failures exacerbated the commercial dispute between the two nations which culminated in war in 1739. The accounting provisions of the Asiento are examined by drawing on managerialist and realist theories of treaty compliance. It is shown that British noncompliance with accounting obligations under the treaty was driven by realist self-interest and the maximisation of material gain. Given that such motivations dominated behaviour attempts to manage noncompliance through the routine processes and structures of international politics proved unsuccessful. Managerial devices such as diplomatic exchanges over treaty ambiguity and securing greater informational transparency merely provided further opportunities for the pursuit of self-interest. It is suggested that divergent perceptions of the role of accounting in international relations stem from the unique political, legal, social and cultural configurations of nation states. The study highlights the limitations of accounting as an instrument of treaty verification. Its effectiveness in that capacity is diminished where there is no shared understanding of the significance, purpose, content and interpretation of accounting information.