Essentiality,Efficiency, and the Efficient Component-Pricing Rule

The determination of interconnection charges to essential facilities is an important problem in regulated telecommunications markets in the wake of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This paper defines mathematical conditions for the essentiality of upstream productive inputs and examines their implications for efficient interconnection pricing. The paper shows conditions under which the efficient component-pricing rule (ECPR) can be derived as a special case of a Ramsey pricing rule. The paper also shows how efficient pricing differs from the ECPR for a number of interesting cases.     

Accounting for decarbonisation and reducing capital at risk in the S&P500

This article accounts for carbon emissions in the S&P 500 and explores the extent to which capital is at risk from decarbonising value chains. At a global level it is proving difficult to decouple carbon emissions from GDP growth. Top-down legal and regulatory arrangements envisaged by the Kyoto Protocol are practically redundant given inconsistent political commitment to mitigating global climate change and promoting sustainability. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and European Commission (EC) are promoting the role of financial markets and financial institutions as drivers of behavioural change mobilising capital allocations to decarbonise corporate activity.     

Commentary: A proposal for theoretical models of stakeholder perceptions of a new financial reporting system

This commentary explores the article by Fontes et al. published in this issue of Accounting Forum. They argue that the scope of IFRS continues to widen across the world, using a number of social science disciplines to discuss stakeholder perceptions of change. The commentary uses Hegel's Science of Logic to situate their arguments through four key theoretical approaches that are prominent in the accounting literature. Ultimately, this has the potential to position IASB frameworks in such a way as to challenge the economic and neoliberal logic on which modern accounting is based.     

Charitable bequest importance among donors to different types of charities

This paper explores differences in the self‐rated importance of charitable estate giving depending upon the type of charitable cause a person donates to during life. One theoretical motivation for lifetime giving is to personally enjoy benefits from improving a shared collective good. However, this motivation is not possible for bequests. Bequest transfers and resulting improvements occur after personal enjoyment of benefits is no longer possible. This paper hypothesizes that among donors to high personal benefit causes (those typically creating shared goods benefitting donors), interest in a charitable bequest (which offers no opportunity for receiving such benefits) will be relatively less than among donors to low personal benefit causes. In order to explore this, each charity type is categorized as providing high, low, or mixed personal benefits from shared collective goods. This hypothesis receives mixed support. Donors to international relief organizations, a low personal benefit charity type, do place a higher importance on charitable bequests than do donors to shared‐goods type causes such as neighborhood associations, service clubs, sports leagues, or “other” charities, including those focused on local public safety and crime. However, donors to arts organizations—a classic example of donors creating a shared good—have a relatively high interest in charitable bequests. One important exception to the exclusion of postmortem personal benefits could come from religious belief. Accordingly, donors to religious causes do place a higher importance on charitable bequests.     

中国经济增长及其对全球大宗商品市场的影响

中国对大宗商品快速、持续的需求增长一直被认为是这十年大宗商品价格上涨的主要拉动因素。然而,与全球经济休戚相关的中国经济2008年不可能不受全球冲击而独善其身。预期中国GDP增长率在2008年下半年和2009年继续放缓。不确定的通胀前景、股价和房价下跌以及政策失误等宏观风险可能会相互作用并彼此增强。因此,中国需求增长放缓在近期可能会让过去五年全球大宗商品价格的猛涨态势稍作休整。     

Knowing the unknowable and contested terrains in accounting

Creating visibilities and breaking silences are powerful legacies of critical accounting research and education. This paper, promoting that we further develop our understandings of how ideas are created, reveals how language is nuanced, power is embed in accounting technology, and accounting education crafts and restricts meaning. Particular ways of knowing in accounting education are appraised as well as emerging approaches to critical and ethical accounting education in order to deliberate: how can we foster a truly critical framework by which educators and students can “think different” and what can be done to promote sustainable, principled, and nuanced business practices? Our views of the morality of our world, how social structures affect ways of knowing, and what disrupts and challenges the status quo are particularly of concern to promote social transformation and justice.