Making sense of complex data using interactive data visualization

An important role for accountants today is to provide decision support to senior management by assisting them in the analysis of large, complex data sets. Interactive data visualization (IDV) facilitates this process by allowing users to navigate, select, and display data via an easy-to-use interface often used as a component of data analytics. Given the increasing popularity of IDV as a tool for making sense of complex data, it is important that accountants become familiar with and learn how to use this technology. This case provides a hands-on opportunity to organize complex accounting data to create IDVs for decision makers to use. Further, the case enables students to understand the potential impact of IDVs on preparers and users of accounting information. Students will assume the role of a division controller in a hypothetical company and create an IDV to assist the chief executive officer (CEO) in decision making.     

Building from Scratch: New Cities,Privatized Urbanism and the Spatial Restructuring of Johannesburg after Apartheid

By the start of the twenty‐first century, the once dominant historical downtown core of Johannesburg had lost its privileged status as the center of business and commercial activities, the metropolitan landscape having been restructured into an assemblage of sprawling, rival edge cities. Real estate developers have recently unveiled ambitious plans to build two completely new cities from scratch: Waterfall City and Lanseria Airport City (formerly called Cradle City) are master‐planned, holistically designed ‘satellite cities’ built on vacant land. While incorporating features found in earlier city‐building efforts, these two new self‐contained, privately‐managed cities operate outside the administrative reach of public authority and thus exemplify the global trend toward privatized urbanism. Waterfall City, located on land that has been owned by the same extended family for nearly 100 years, is spearheaded by a single corporate entity. Lanseria Airport City/Cradle City is a planned ‘aerotropolis’ surrounding the existing Lanseria airport at the northwest corner of the Johannesburg metropole. These two new private cities differ from earlier large‐scale urban projects because everything from basic infrastructure (including utilities, sewerage, and the installation and maintenance of roadways), landscaping, security services, the regulation of common spaces, and selling and branding the city are firmly in the hands of private profit‐making corporate entities and outside the mandate of public authorities.     

The British Airways Heritage Collection: an ethnographic ‘history’

This article develops an ethnographic account of the development and history of the British Airways Heritage Centre (BAHC). Responding to several observations throughout the literature, we report on our experiences of engagement with British Airways’ archives over a 25-year period. In doing so our focus is on the much-neglected history of archives as powerful influences on how corporate histories are written. The ethnographic account is rooted in ANTi-History, an approach to historiography, that focuses on the production of history as knowledge of the past by following a number of human (e.g. archive volunteers) and non-human (e.g. airline artefacts) actors to reassemble the elements that constitute an archive at a point in time. To that end, we trace the inter-relationships between histories of British Airways and the development of the BAHC. We conclude that a focus on the various human and non-human relationships that constitute an archive can help the researcher to identify the hidden influences on the production of history that can otherwise serve to enrol him or her.     

The cost-effectiveness of alectinib in anaplastic lymphoma kinase-positive (ALK+) advanced NSCLC previously treated with crizotinib

Introduction Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) targeting drugs provide an important option for advanced non-small cell lung cancer patients with this distinct tumor type; however, there is considerable uncertainty as to which drug provides the optimal value after crizotinib treatment. This study estimated the cost-utility of alectinib vs ceritinib from a US payer perspective.

Methods A cost-utility model was developed using partition survival methods and three health states: progression-free (PF), post-progression (PP), and death. Survival data were derived from the key clinical trials (alectinib: NP28761 &; NP28673, ceritinib: ASCEND I and II). Costs included drugs, adverse events, and supportive care. Utilities were based on trial data and the literature. One-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses (PSA) were performed to assess parameter uncertainty.

Results Treatment with alectinib vs ceritinib resulted in increases of 2.55 months in the PF state, 0.44 quality adjusted life-years (QALYs), and $13,868, yielding a mean cost/QALY of $31,180. In the PSA, alectinib had a 96% probability of being cost-effective at a willingness-to-pay of $100,000/QALY. Drivers of model results were drug costs and utilities in the PF health state. The ICER ranged from $10,600–$65,000 per QALY in scenario analyses, including a sub-group analysis limited to patients with prior chemotherapy and crizotinib treatment.

Conclusions Treatment with alectinib in ALK?+?crizotinib-treated patients increased time progression-free and QALYs vs ceritinib. The marginal cost increase was driven by longer treatment durations with alectinib. This model demonstrates that alectinib may be considered a cost-effective treatment after progression on crizotinib.     

An Exploratory Study on Nonlinear Causality Among the MILA Markets

According to conventional portfolio theory, an increase in the interconnectedness of international financial markets may reduce the potential for constructing diversified portfolios. This article explores the implications of the creation of the Latin American Integrated Market (MILA)¹ over the dependence structure of its members using correlation and cointegration analysis as well as linear and nonlinear Granger causality tests. The creation of MILA aimed to enhance the integration process that Latin American financial markets “naturally” present while still providing diversification opportunities to investors. The results of our empirical analysis suggest that such objective is being achieved. Evidence of a rise in cross-country linear correlations and their linear causal relationship supports the idea of an increasing financial integration process in the region, while the absence of cointegration and the weakening of the nonlinear causal relationship favors the creation of diversified regional portfolios. These findings provide valuable insights for investment portfolio designers, regulators, and supervisors.     

Mismeasured Household Size and Its Implications for the Identification of Economies of Scale: Correction

We correct an error from Halliday (2010) in which we explored the degree to which household size is measured with errors.