From compromise to concept? – a review of ‘other comprehensive income’

This paper reviews how ‘other comprehensive income’ (OCI) entered financial reporting by tracing major Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB) and International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) projects that required direct entries to equity and describing recent efforts to make sense of the practice. It was the fixation on net income that brought about departures from all-inclusive income, which were repeatedly made over the years without decidedly devoting attention to developing a conceptual basis. OCI was used as a compromise to incorporate current values in the balance sheet, while retaining historical cost principles in the income statement. When the practice was labeled as OCI, it became institutionalized without a clear meaning. A sense-making of the practice then replaced the debates on the adequacy of using OCI and standard setters have realized that additional layers of theory became necessary to explain, for example, reclassification adjustments. Yet, the IASB has made clear in its recent Exposure Draft of a revised conceptual framework that it does not intend to pursue a fresh start in performance reporting that appears to be needed conceptually. Instead, practical considerations, primarily on International Financial Reporting Standards adoption in Japan, seem to lead to another ex-post rationalization of OCI, this time around a conceptually vacuous use of the relevance characteristic.     

The Informational Effect of Corporate Lobbying Against Proposed Accounting Standards

Accounting standard setting has been described as a highly political process. Different interest groups are often quite ready to criticize any proposed accounting standard and lobby the accounting standard setting body. This study explores the possibility that certain information might be revealed through corporate lobbying behavior. A game-theoretic model is formulated to examine the implications of a proposed accounting standard which, if passed, would require the financial statement recording of some previously undisclosed liabilities. In this model, management has incentive to lobby against the standard and prevent the mandatory reporting of the liabilities. Lobbying against the standard, however, may itself reveal to the market information about the liabilities. Results of the equilibrium analysis show that, because of this informational effect, a company may choose not to lobby even though the company may have a high liability and can be adversely affected by the proposed standard. On the other hand, a company may avoid revealing its liability level if it can adopt the "always-lobby" strategy. Furthermore, a company may not have to lobby at all if it can "free-ride" on other companies' lobbying effort. Companies may even be able to enjoy "free-riding" at least some of the time if each company can share the responsibilities and lobby on a probabilistic and what otherwise may seem like a random basis.     

Agenda Entrance Complexity in International Accounting Standard Setting: The Case of IFRS for SMEs

Features of rational decision making (such as agenda entrance criteria and statement of jurisdiction) barely conceal the complexity of international accounting standard setting. In 2003, when the International Financial Reporting Standard for Small and Medium‐sized Entities (IFRS for SMEs) project achieved agenda entrance, the International Accounting Standards Board's (IASB) jurisdiction was to develop, ‘a single set of … accounting standards … to help participants in the world's capital markets’. Drawing on interviewees' recollections and other material, this study of how the project achieved agenda entrance finds within‐IASB opposition to the project, arguing it was outside the IASB's jurisdiction that dissolved with the realisation that the IASB's jurisdiction would be changed to encompass the project.     

Intrinsic Persistence of Wage Inflation in New Keynesian Models of the Business Cycles

We derive and estimate a New Keynesian wage Phillips curve that accounts for intrinsic inertia. In line with microevidence on wage setting, we consider a wage‐setting model featuring an upward‐sloping hazard function, based on the notion that the probability of resetting a wage depends on the time elapsed since the last reset. Our wage Phillips curve embeds also backward terms. We test the hazard function slope using generalized method of moment estimation. Then, placing our equation in a small‐scale New Keynesian model, we investigate its dynamic properties using Bayesian estimation. Model comparison shows that our model outperforms commonly used alternative methods to introduce persistence.     

It is all about the emotional state: Managing tourists’ experiences

When consuming tourism and leisure services tourists do not only expect professional services but also desire satisfying emotional experiences. To measure satisfaction with emotional experiences traditional service quality and satisfaction research is outdated because those models are based on cognitive components and neglect emotional aspects of customer satisfaction. This research investigates factors determining the service setting that enhance customers’ emotional reactions and lead to psychological states and behaviours. Referring to existing theories and empirical evidence in environmental psychology, a research model is developed explaining the relationship between different components of service settings influencing emotional states and satisfaction. Guests’ emotions are assessed during service consumption in hotel settings in order to investigate the importance of emotional states. The paper derives three main factors (leisure experience, hardware and human ware) significantly influencing emotional states of customers in high-quality hotels.     

Macroeconomic shocks, unionized labour markets and central bank disclosure policy: How beneficial is increased transparency?

The paper investigates the implications of disclosure by the central bank to the private sector of information relating to the current realizations of macroeconomic disturbances. In the context of an economy in which the goods market is monopolistically competitive and where wages are set by atomistic unions, we find that greater precision of information provided to wage setters in respect of supply shocks has ambiguous welfare effects, both from the perspective of the social loss function and from the viewpoint of unions who act on the information. An important feature of the model is an externality in union wage setting which implies the outcome of the wage determination process is collectively inefficient.     

中国现代城市增长与经济增长关系分析

以中国现代历史时期城市(仅指建制城市)数量增长作为中国城市化的重要侧面,结合中国城市化动因分析,探讨了城市增长与经济发展水平的相关关系。通过对中国现代历史时期及现代化过程(实行改革开放以来)中各个阶段城市数量增长状况及增长原因分析,认为区域城市增长及城市化进程应与经济发展水平相适应。提出我国今后建制城市设置应主要基于城市化进程与经济发展水平相关关系科学规律基础上,限制城市数量的盲目增长。     

Imperfectly Credible Disinflation under Endogenous Time‐Dependent Pricing

The real effects of an imperfectly credible disinflation depend critically on the extent of price rigidity. We examine this interaction in a model with endogenous time‐dependent pricing. Both the endogenous initial degree of price rigidity and changes in the duration of price spells during disinflation are important in explaining the effects of imperfect credibility. We initially consider a setup where the degree of credibility is fixed and then allow agents to update beliefs about the “type” of monetary authority that they face. In both cases, the interaction between endogeneity of pricing behavior and imperfect credibility increases the output costs of disinflation.     

谈汉英语言中的几种常见修辞现象对比

汉英语言对比,尤其是两种语言中的常用修辞现象的对比,是汉英翻译学习的有效方法。本文就两种语言中最常见,用法又最为相近的几种修辞手段做了详尽的对比。这些修辞包括比喻中的明喻、暗喻和借喻,还有夸张、拟人和反语。