Making Benefit Transfers Work: Deriving and Testing Principles for Value Transfers for Similar and Dissimilar Sites Using a Case Study of the Non-Market Benefits of Water Quality Improvements Across Europe

We implement a controlled, multi-site experiment to develop and test guidance principles for benefits transfers. These argue that when transferring across relatively similar sites, simple mean value transfers are to be preferred but that when sites are relatively dissimilar then value function transfers will yield lower errors. The paper also provides guidance on the appropriate specification of transferable value functions arguing that these should be developed from theoretical rather than ad-hoc statistical approaches. These principles are tested via a common format valuation study of water quality improvements across five countries. While this provides an idealised tested, results support the above principles and suggest directions for future transfer studies.     

Bounding the future: The use of scenarios in assessing climate change impacts

This paper investigates the contribution of socio-economic scenarios to improve decisions and policies in climate assessments. We specifically looked at adaptation projects in the Dutch Climate changes Spatial Planning programme. Based on the four decision failure criteria neglect of internal information, bounded rationality, insufficient expansion of existing mental models and stickiness and lack of friction of information and knowledge, it was concluded that in these projects, socio-economic scenarios appear to generate useful data, but that their full potential to reduce decision failure is not likely to be exploited. Therefore adaptation options suggested by these studies may not be ‘future-proof’: they may be appropriate in some future societies, but fail in others. We believe similar results would be obtained in other contexts. Possible decision failures are caused by neglecting socio-economic developments, limiting the number of storylines generated by scenario studies to one or two, lack of stakeholder involvement in the scenario development and ignoring discontinuities.     

Corporate Governance in South Africa

The King Report on Corporate Governance (1994) evoked unprecedented interest in corporate governance in South Africa. This does not mean that corporate governance was not an issue of concern before the release of this historical report. To the contrary, corporate governance in its broader sense has been at stake since the inception of the first publicly owned companies in South Africa. This article intends to give an overview of corporate governance in South Africa. It starts by making a distinction between broad and narrow conceptions of corporate governance. Before applying this distinction to the practice of corporate governance in South Africa, a brief overview of the corporate landscape in South Africa is provided. Then the South African situation with regard to broad and narrow corporate governance respectively is analysed. The article ends with a discussion of the review of corporate governance that currently is in the making in South Africa. Throughout the article both the financial and ethical dimensions of corporate governance is attended to.     

Analyse über Bündnisse für Arbeit auf unsicherem Grund—Replik auf Hübler

In der Februarausgabe des WIRTSCHAFTSDIENST ver?ffentlichten wir einen Aufsatz von Professor Olaf Hübler mit dem Titel „Quo vadis, betriebliches Bündnis?“ ¹. Hierzu eine Replik von Heiko Massa-Wirth und Hartmut Seifert und anschlie?end eine Erwiderung von Olaf Hübler. Dr. Hartmut Seifert, 62, ist Leiter des Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Instituts (WSI) in der Hans B?ckler Stiftung; Heiko Massa-Wirth, 30, Dipl.-Verwaltungswissenschaftler, ist Promotionsstipendiat am WSI. ¹ O. Hübler : Quo vadis, betriebliches Bündnis?, in: WIRTSCHAFTSDIENST, 86. Jg. (2006), H. 2, S. 96-101.     

The Role and Current Status of IFRS in the Completion of National Accounting Rules – Evidence from Romania

Abstract

Romanian accounting rules (RAR) had followed a convergence process with International Accounting Standards/International Financial Reporting Standards (IAS/IFRS) since 1999, and the level of convergence has increased over time. The Romanian accounting regulator continues to follow IAS/IFRS in internalizing the Accounting Directive 2013 Directive 2013/34/EU. Directive 2013/34/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on the annual financial statements, consolidated financial statements and related reports of certain types of undertakings, Official Journal of the European Union, L 182/19. [Google Scholar]/34/EU. Only a few major differences still exist (some of them due the restrictions in the Accounting Directive 2013 Directive 2013/34/EU. Directive 2013/34/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on the annual financial statements, consolidated financial statements and related reports of certain types of undertakings, Official Journal of the European Union, L 182/19. [Google Scholar]/34/EU) between RAR and IFRS. However, RAR lack the level of detail existing in IFRS, and IFRS cannot be used in practice as a source of guidance and interpretation. While major stakeholders have a positive attitude towards the convergence with IAS/IFRS, the Romanian accounting regulator intends to keep the control over RAR and avoid differences in interpretations that might have tax consequences. Despite the good level of convergence of RAR with IFRS, practitioners tend to continue to utilize the tax approach as a source of guidance and interpretation.     

Corporate Reporting in Central and Eastern Europe: Issues,Challenges and Research Opportunities

The purpose of this paper, building upon the papers included in this special section of Accounting in Europe on Corporate reporting in CEE countries and on our knowledge of the region, is to broaden out and open up dialogue and debate about how local institutions are evolving and impact the corporate reporting practices in this under-researched region. We begin by discussing the institutional context for conducting research on corporate reporting by entities in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), within the broader context of emerging, transitional economies. We also reflect on how research conducted on CEE countries can make a relevant contribution to the international literature, and exemplify by summarizing the research questions and findings of the papers included in the special section. A future research agenda emerges, given the gaps in the international literature and the future research implications suggested in the papers constituting the special section.     

Price premiums,payment delays,and default risk: understanding developing country farmers’ decisions to market through a cooperative or a private trader

Smallholder farmers in developing countries face a competitive disadvantage in modern agricultural supply chains. Joint marketing through cooperatives is a potential tool to mitigate these disadvantages; yet cooperatives’ success in these settings is uneven at best. We develop an analytical model to study a farmer's choice of selling to a private trader who pays cash on delivery but may exercise market power or a cooperative that promises a price premium but delays payment and carries a concomitant risk of default. In the presence of impatient and risk‐averse farmers, we show that these factors can severely limit smallholder patronage of a cooperative, despite a promised price premium. We then construct and parameterize a simulation model to fit a profile of heterogeneous farmers within a prototype developing‐country village, and study the optimal decisions of farmers regarding marketing through a cooperative versus a private trader. Results suggest that modest improvements in either timeliness of payment or probability of default can induce a substantial increase in a cooperative's market share and economic viability. Extending the simulation analysis to a dynamic setting shows how implementing reasonable policies to improve a cooperative's payment timeliness and default probability can markedly improve its growth trajectory.