Accounting regulation, inertia and organisational self-perception: Double-entry adoption in a Spanish casa de comercio (1829-1852)

This paper analyses the influence exerted by compulsory mechanisms and cognitive and social factors on the adoption and implementation of double-entry bookkeeping. The study focuses on a small, commercial and family owned company located in Spain in the period 1829-1852. As our main conclusion we suggest that the adoption of double-entry bookkeeping in 1851 was influenced more by the managers' self-perception as traders, and the belief (internal and environmental) that the company must employ an accounting method appropriate to its new commercial status, than by State pressures derived from the enactment of a new accounting regulation in 1829.     

Regional specialisation and industry location in the long run: Spain in the US mirror (1856�C2002)

This paper studies the long-run pattern of regional specialisation in Spain for the period 1856–2002. We have obtained an inverted U-shape trend in manufacturing specialisation which is similar to that in the USA. Using a model that nests factor endowments and increasing returns, we find that both the latter influence manufacturing location, albeit with variations over time, factor endowments being the most decisive. Manufacturing industries intensive in agricultural and mining inputs are located near regions with these factor endowments, while human capital location gained importance from 1965 onwards. Being located near the market was also significant for some industries. The inverted U-shape observed in manufacturing specialisation is due to the fact that the importance of immobile factors increased regional specialisation. However, when mobile factors increased, as was the case with skilled labour, and when this factor converged across regions, specialisation decreased. The fact that the importance of central markets diminishing also contributed to this trend.     

Labour market response to globalisation: Spain, 1880–1913

This paper analyses the impact of globalisation (trade and migration) on the Spanish labour market between 1880 and 1913 by examining the influence that globalisation factors had on agricultural and industrial wages. Our results show that the nineteenth century grain invasion had a negative impact on agricultural wages, whereas the fall in wheat prices did not benefit industry workers. We also found that migration pushed up real agricultural and industrial wages. As agriculture was the main sector in the economy, the final impact was a wage decrease. The negative impact of trade on agricultural and industrial labour markets partly explains the trade policy response of “integral protection”. However, other alternatives that would have been effective in raising living standards, such as migration policy, were not used.     

Does market competitiveness significantly affect public intervention in agricultural insurance: the case in Italy

Analyses of agricultural insurance failures often assume the existence of competitive supply, tracing the reasons for high insurance cost and limited farmer participation to informational problems, and suggesting the need for premium subsidization in order to increase participation. However, in countries such as Spain and Italy, where agricultural insurance is most highly subsidized, it could be that supply is not fully competitive. In this article, we explore the incidence of public subsidies to agricultural insurance premia when supply is noncompetitive. Through the use of a simple empirical model of an insurance market, it is shown that, while in the case of a competitive supply, subsidies to insurance would benefit farmers, a monopolistic supply would capture most of the subsidy, thus eliminating the potential incentive towards wider participation by farmers. The model is applied to a panel of Italian farms for different levels of risk aversion to demonstrate the limited effect that a subsidy to a hypothetical all risk yield insurance would have on farmer participation in the case of monopolistic supply.     

A Survey of L1 Regression

L₁ regularization, or regularization with an L₁ penalty, is a popular idea in statistics and machine learning. This paper reviews the concept and application of L₁ regularization for regression. It is not our aim to present a comprehensive list of the utilities of the L₁ penalty in the regression setting. Rather, we focus on what we believe is the set of most representative uses of this regularization technique, which we describe in some detail. Thus, we deal with a number of L₁‐regularized methods for linear regression, generalized linear models, and time series analysis. Although this review targets practice rather than theory, we do give some theoretical details about L₁‐penalized linear regression, usually referred to as the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (lasso).     

Govern(mentality) and Accounting: the Influence of Different Enlightenment Discourses in Two Spanish Cases (1761–1777)

New perspectives in accounting history have uncovered previously unattended relations between accounting and government. Earlier Foucauldian analyses of governments have not explained sufficiently the relations of accounting practices to governmental discourses in order to manage populations.
This work uses the governmentality frame to analyse the role of accounting in two organizations located in the south of Spain in the second half of the eighteenth century: the New Settlements of Sierra Morena and Andalucia (NSs) and the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville (RTFS). The period studied is remarkable because it was the apogee of the Enlightenment in Spain. From the standpoint of government, this period facilitated a new way to manage populations. The present work has drawn on Foucault's concept of governmentality in order to discover how accounting worked in two government-supported organizations independently of the discourses that pervaded each one. Drawing on the reticulation of the space, the use of rules and accounting from the governmental perspective, we analyse those institutions.
The article concludes that the reticulation of space is an essential apparatus to exert action at a distance; the rules are a type of government technology; and, overall, accounting is a practice for the mastery of the population independently from the discourse of the institution.     

Finding optimal price risk management instruments: the case of the Spanish potato sector

This article offers a comprehensive analysis of the problem of choosing between alternative market risk management instruments. We model farmers' behavior to optimize the certainty equivalent, formulated by a mean–variance model, by combining instruments with and without basis risk. Results are expressed as the demands for hedging with futures, forward contracts and insurance. Theoretical results are applied to a selection of Spanish producers of fresh potatoes, a sector that is exposed to significant market risks. Amsterdam's Euronext provides potato futures prices, and the recently launched revenue insurance in Spain provides the example for price insurance. Three conclusions summarize the article's main findings. First, we show that Spanish potato revenue insurance subsidies are a factor that determines the instrument rankings and choice. Second, the efficiency of insurance subsidies is generally low. Finally, the Amsterdam potato futures market does not provide a cost‐effective means to manage price risks for Spanish fresh potato growers.     

Carrying capacity assessment for tourist destinations. Methodology for the creation of synthetic indicators applied in a coastal area

The growth and expansion of tourism is a complex phenomenon and its study requires multiple disciplines. When related to sustainability, the growth limits and carrying capacity of destinations must also be considered. The objective of this article is to develop a methodology to assess the growth limits of tourist destinations, and this method is then applied to the management and planning of an open tourist resort. The limits to growth are established using a mathematical formulation (i.e., multicriteria analyses, based on the reference point methodology) based on synthetic indicators applied to two scenarios: weak and strong sustainability. There are two developments in this type of research. The first is that the application of this method is neither restricted to a natural protected area, which has its own rules and management, nor to an island possessing geographically controlled entry and exit points. Rather, this study focuses on an open coastal area with an economy based on mass tourism. Second, this new way of assessing growth limits uses a flexible formula – adaptable to other coastal areas, e.g., rural, natural, and urban – depending on the impacts generated by the tourism and the objectives specified by destination managers.     

An assessment of another decade of capital controls in Colombia: 1998–2008

We explore the effectiveness of capital controls in Colombia. We analyze the impact of administrative restrictions to capital flows on aggregate capital flows, the composition of capital flows, the real exchange rate, and economic activity using restricted versions of vector error correction models (VEC) that control for exogenous global financial conditions. The models are estimated using monthly data ranging from August of 1998 to May of 2008. In addition we estimate GARCH models to identify if capital controls have had relevant impacts on the volatility of the nominal exchange rate and of other relevant asset prices. These models are estimated using weekly data covering the same time period. Results suggest that the capital controls used since 1998 have been ineffective in reducing capital flows and the trend of the Colombian peso to appreciate. In addition there is no evidence suggesting a change in the composition of capital flows induced by capital controls. We find some evidence in favor of capital controls reducing nominal exchange rate volatility at high frequencies.     

Local Dealer Adoption of a Foreign Manufacturer-Sponsored Internet-Based Information System

ABSTRACT

Firms often use Internet-based interorganizational information systems (IBIS) to facilitate the integration of information and communication between channel members. However, in practice firms are sometimes reluctant or even refuse to adopt such systems, especially when sponsored by a foreign manufacturer to local dealers. This article presents an empirical study of 80 dealers faced with the IBIS decision from a large international tire manufacturer. The results indicate that perceived financial and usage benefits of the IBIS and security are important determinants of dealer adoption of an IBIS. Further, the results indicate that higher IBIS adoption levels correspond to changes in the nature of the channel relationship, operational and exchange benefits, and commitment of the dealer to the manufacturer.