Zeitschriftenlandschaft Nachkriegszeit

The article describes and explores the relative abundance of political and cultural magazines published, under allied licences, in high circulation in post-war Germany between 1945 and 1949. They dominated the slowly re-emerging institutions of the political and cultural public sphere. Licence holders and editors as well as titles and contributions reflect, on the one hand, a central aspect of allied cultural policy: the controlled development of a democratic press. On the other hand the magazines show the intention of the mostly liberal-conservative German editors and contributors to lay the foundations for a new German society by contemplating the lost entity of occidental cultural values. After the currency reform, however, the magazine landscape was completely restructured according to market aspects, and the editors’ and contributers’ claim on intellectual leadership in the two newly emerging German states did not materialize.     

Levels,trends and consistency of employment and unemployment figures in South Africa

This article appraises the similarities and dissimilarities between the major sources of information on the South African labour force, ie the CSS Employment Series, the Standardised Employment Series and recent household surveys. It concludes that the generally bleak picture of very high unemployment rates presented in the household surveys is broadly accurate. Further, race, gender and location are major determinants of labour‐force participation and employment. Finally, the article highlights the lack of work experience among the unemployed.     

Peanut Research and Poverty Reduction: Impacts of Variety Improvement to Control Peanut Viruses in Uganda

A procedure is developed and applied for predicting ex ante impacts of agricultural research on aggregate poverty, using as an example the poverty-reducing impact of peanut research in Uganda. Market-level information on economic surplus changes is combined with a procedure for allocating income changes to individual households. Characteristics of farmers that affect their likelihood of technology adoption are used to create a technology adoption profile. Associated changes in poverty resulting from adoption are computed using poverty indices. Predicted income changes at the household level are aggregated to the market level and reconciled with calculations of economic surplus changes.     

Natural Language Processing in Accounting,Auditing and Finance: A Synthesis of the Literature with a Roadmap for Future Research

Natural language processing (NLP) is a part of the artificial intelligence domain focused on communication between humans and computers. NLP attempts to address the inherent problem that while human communications are often ambiguous and imprecise, computers require unambiguous and precise messages to enable understanding. The accounting, auditing and finance domains frequently put forth textual documents intended to communicate a wide variety of messages, including, but not limited to, corporate financial performance, management's assessment of current and future firm performance, analysts’ assessments of firm performance, domain standards and regulations as well as evidence of compliance with relevant standards and regulations. NLP applications have been used to mine these documents to obtain insights, make inferences and to create additional methodologies and artefacts to advance knowledge in accounting, auditing and finance. This paper synthesizes the extant literature in NLP in accounting, auditing and finance to establish the state of current knowledge and to identify paths for future research. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond the boring grey: The construction of the colourful accountant

The accounting profession has long laboured under the weight of the stigma of the accounting stereotype. This unappealing persona may pose a potential problem for recruitment into the profession. How is the gregarious graduate to be tempted into the tentacles of the dull and the dreary? Drawing on Goffman's work on stigma and impression management, this paper examines the recruitment literature of the ‘big four’ accounting firms and six of the professional institutes in an attempt to unravel the techniques deployed by the profession to camouflage the spectre of the stereotype. The investigation reveals how the recruitment discourse, an important stage in the process of professional socialization, is used to construct an image of the trendy and fun loving accountant. Through text and image, a carefully orchestrated campaign of impression management casts aside the boring bookkeeper in favour of an altogether more colourful characterisation.