Accounting and the European single currency

This paper considers some accounting problems in the period leading up to the introduction of the European single currency, the euro. Taking into account two different scenarios regarding the economic and monetary union (EMU) from its first stage, different aspects concerning the area of accounting have been revised. These include exchange differences, financial states comparison, financial states conversion, increase in capital, discriminatory treatment of active and passive monetary and nonmonetary assets, accounting records, annual accounts or rounding. This paper will point out some of the problematic areas that may arise from the introduction of the euro. Although several aspects have been taken into account, as the EMU approaches, many other issues will need to be discussed.     

Supply chain management: A multidisciplinary content analysis of vertical relations between companies, 1997-2006

The aim of this work is to contribute to a better understanding of the research conducted on supply chain management (SCM) at a multidisciplinary level. To this end, a content analysis was performed of the most significant scientific literature about marketing, logistics, management and marketing channels published over the period 1997-2006. As a result, a database of 414 papers from 14 journals was created. Analysis of these works reveals the level of development of the main lines of research into SCM and makes it possible to detect the topics that require greater attention and which may be the object of future studies conducted by researchers and academics. It also allows managerial staff to identify the methodologies and tools that can be used to improve the management of relationships within the supply chain. One of the main conclusions reached in the study is the shortage of studies conducted on the supply chain as a network of enterprises, since most research focuses on a single enterprise or, at the most, on its relationships with its suppliers or direct customers.     

Loss of water availability and stream biodiversity under land abandonment and climate change in a Mediterranean catchment (Olzinelles,NE Spain)

In the north rim of the Mediterranean region, where forest cover is increasing as a result of land abandonment and temperatures are rising as a result of climate change, there is increasing interest for the effects of such changes on the runoff of water courses. This is a paramount issue for the conservation of many freshwater habitats and species. In this work we studied the effects of both an increase in forest cover after depopulation and land abandonment and an increase in temperature on the runoff of a Mediterranean catchment and on the aquatic and semi-aquatic fauna species of the stream (Olzinelles valley, NE Spain). Although in our simulation no decreasing trend in runoff is detected, the monthly runoff-rainfall ratio is now 15% lower than 30 years ago, a fact that may be attributed to a drier period rather than to the small afforestation experienced by the catchment in the last decades. Other factors such as increasing temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and increasing canopy cover are discussed. The observed decrease in the water flow has caused the disappearance of white-clawed crayfish (Austropotamobius pallipes), Mediterranean barbel (Barbus meridionalis), chub (Squalius cephalus), European eel (Anguilla anguilla), and southern water vole (Arvicola sapidus). Our results suggest that in a progressively warmer climate, and especially after land abandonment processes, management of Mediterranean mountain areas should be oriented towards an appropriate distribution of agrarian and forest land-covers in terms of water availability. Down to the stream scale, the pools that keep water throughout the year should be conserved and extended to enhance its potential to maintain aquatic and semi-aquatic species populations.     

Francis Ysidro Edgeworth's Catalan grandfather

Based on a 1831 note by Lord Holland, Sir John Hicks incorrectly concluded in a 1984 article that the maternal grandfather of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, General Antonio Eroles, ‘a political refugee from Catalonia’ according to Keynes (), was a close relative of the Baron of Eroles. In this article, new information from Spanish and Irish sources about Antonio Eroles and his family is presented. It includes his birth place and day and it details his activities during the period 1823?–?34. As a consequence of this information, Lord Holland and Sir John Hicks' speculations are refuted.     

Strong maximals: Elements with maximal score in partial orders

It is usually assumed that maximal elements are the best option for an agent. But there are situations in which we can observe that maximal elements are different one from another. This is the case of partial orders, in which one maximal element can be strictly preferred to almost every other element, whereas another maximal is not strictly preferred to any element. As partial orders are an important tool for modelling human behavior, it is interesting to find, for this kind of binary relation, those maximal elements that could be considered the best ones. In so doing, we define a selection inside the maximal set, which we call strong maximals (elements with maximal score), which is proved to be appropriate for choosing among maximals in a partial order.JEL Classification: D11Acknowledgments: Financial support from the Spanish DGICYT-Feder, under project BEC2001-0781, from Fundación Séneca (PI74/00826/FS/01), Generalitat Valenciana (CTDIB2002/314) and from the IVIE, is acknowledged. The comments of the referees improved the work. We thank M. C. Sánchez and J. V. Llinares for several comments and suggestions.     

Why is there a Separation between Distance Selling in EU Law and the Tourism Industry?

Twelve years have passed since the partial exclusion of most tourist services from the Distance Selling Directive (art. 3 para. 2). The application of a particular right of withdrawal to contracts negotiated away from business premises for the provision of these services was considered inappropriate. Out of this consumer protection will be rather weaker than in other distance contracts. Additional information cannot be required from the service provider and rash decisions resulting from an informational disadvantage, i.e., a lack of personal contact, cannot be rectified by terminating the contract. These difficulties can only be partially resolved by referring to other regulations, such as national norms implementing the E-Commerce Directive (arts. 5 to 11) or the new Timeshare Directive (arts. 4 and 5), among others. Recently, the proposal for a Directive on consumer rights of 8 October 2008 maintains the same approach (art. 20 para. 3, art. 3 para 3) and the Draft Common Frame of Reference also coincides to some extent with the exclusion of some tourist services from distance selling protection. The aim of this paper is to review this exclusion by means of examining the dynamics of tourism services.     

Family‐Owned Business Succession: The Influence of Pre‐performance in the Nomination of Family and Nonfamily Members: Evidence from Spanish Firms

Although family‐owned business succession has been widely researched, very few studies investigate the relationship between preperformance and succession. Drawing on the agency and the resource‐based view theories, we investigate how previous firm performance may influence the nomination of a family or a nonfamily member to top senior positions. We argue that positive firm performance will lead to the nomination of a family member, while negative firm performance leads to nonfamily nominations. Using a stepwise logistic regression with a bootstrap procedure on a sample of nonfinancial firm listed in the Spanish Stock Exchange, the results indicate that performance prior to succession does not affect these nominations, while directive experience does.     

Public Policies on Corporate Social Responsibility: The Role of Governments in Europe

Over the last decade, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been defined first as a concept whereby companies decide voluntarily to contribute to a better society and cleaner environment and, second, as a process by which companies manage their relationship␣with stakeholders (European Commission, 2001. Nowadays, CSR has become a priority issue on governments’ agendas. This has changed governments’ capacity to act and impact on social and environmental issues in their relationship with companies, but has also affected the framework in which CSR public policies are designed: governments are incorporating multi-stakeholder strategies. This article analyzes the CSR public policies in European advanced democracies, and more specifically the EU-15 countries, and provides explanatory keys on how governments have understood, designed and implemented their CSR public policies. The analysis has entailed the classification of CSR public policies taking into consideration the actor to which the governments’ policies were addressed. This approach to the analysis of CSR public policies in the EU-15 countries leads us to observe coinciding lines of action among the different countries analyzed, which has enabled us to propose a ‹four ideal’ typology model for governmental action on CSR in Europe: Partnership, Business in the Community, Sustainability, and Citizenship, and Agora. The main contribution of this article is to propose an analytical framework to analyze CSR public policies, which provide a perspective on the relationships between governments, businesses, and civil society stakeholders, and enable us to incorporate the analysis of CSR public policies into a broader approach focused on social governance. Laura Albareda is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Innovation, ESADE, Universidad Ramon Llull-URL. She is principal researcher and manager of the Observatory on Socially Responsible Investment in Spain. Her areas of research and academic interest are Corporate Social Responsibility, Business Ethics, Global Governance and Public Authorites, Governments and Public Policies on Corporate Social Responsibility and Socially Responsible Investment. Josep M. Lozano is currently Professor & Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Innovation, ESADE Business School (URL). He is Co-founder of ética, Economía y Dirección (Spanish branch of the EBEN) and member of the editorial board of Ethical Perspectives and Society and Business Review. He was member of the Catalan Government’s Commission on Values, and is member of the Spanish Ministry of Employment and Social Affairs’ Commission of Experts on CSR. He has been a highly commended runner-up in the European Faculty Pioneer Awards of the Beyond Grey Pinstripes and is author of Ethics and Organizations. Understanding Business Ethics as a Learning Process (Kluwer). Tamyko Ysa is an Assistant Professor of the Institute of Public Management, and the Department of Business Policy at ESADE. Her areas of interest are the management of partnerships and their impact on the creation of public value; the design, implementation and evaluation of public policies, and the relations between companies and governments. She is the Principal Researcher of the Research Group for Leadership and Innovation in Public Management (GLIGP). She is coauthor of Governments and Corporate Social Responsibility (Palgrave MacMillan).