The development of the group accounts disclosure system in Japan

The Japanese disclosure system of consolidated statements was introduced in 1977 and extensively revised in 1997. The role of the bureaucracy has been significant in these developments and seems to be part of Japan's closed culture. However, other explanations could also be applied. In particular, although Japanese firms opposed such disclosures on the basis of preparation costs, the Japanese government had to modernize the disclosure system, including consolidation, in order to develop the securities market regardless of an individual company's interests.     

The influence of management and auditors on consolidation decisions

Historically, the decision over whether or not to consolidate was guided by bright-line rules, which outlined the minimum percentage of ownership required in a subsidiary for it to be considered controlled by a reporting entity and thus included in the consolidated financial statements (CFSs). Today, U.S. GAAP and IFRS use a principles-based approach, which is guided by the concept of control to determine whether a subsidiary is to be consolidated in the CFSs. In this context, a debate exists between managers and auditors about which subsidiaries should be consolidated. To deepen our understanding of how managers and auditors grapple with consolidation decisions, we interviewed several CFOs and audit partners to determine if they are anchored to legalistic mechanisms or if, instead, they are strategically developing ways to support the consolidation decision. Based on our interviews, we find that opportunistic transactions—criticized at the time of the rules-based approach—still exist due to the search for legalistic mechanisms that protect underlying choices influenced by economic incentives. Such results are crucial for analysts and investors to properly interpret consolidated financial performance.     

Africa’s single aviation market: The progress so far

To promote the development of air transport at the continental level, several policies were introduced, leading to the Yamoussoukro Decision (YD) in late 1999, which had the liberalisation of the intra-African aviation spaces as its main objective. Even though notable progress has been achieved towards more market-oriented aviation policies, at the pan-African level some markets are still restrictive and inconsistent with the YD, particularly with respect to the granting of 5th freedom rights. This paper aims to examine recent developments in the aviation sector in Africa, with a focus on the implementation of the YD. The obstacles to liberalisation are discussed and several measures for facilitating Africa’s move towards multilateral open skies are investigated. These include, among others, a greater collaboration and co-operation among African airlines, as well as between African airlines and foreign ones; redefinition of the role and responsibilities of different institutions which are instrumental in implementing the YD and some further issues such as ownership guidelines.     

Benefits of in-vehicle consolidation in less than truckload freight transportation operations

Researchers and public agencies have proposed consolidation policies as an alternative to increase truck payload utilization and mitigate externalities produced by freight transportation. Understanding and enhancing the economic mechanisms that lead to freight consolidation can ease the implementation of these strategies, increase profits for shippers and carriers, and reduce freight-related negative externalities. An important mechanism that has recently been studied for cost reduction in the freight industry is combinatorial auctions. In these auctions, a shipper invites a set of carriers to submit bids for freight lane contracts. Carriers can bid for individual lanes or bundles of them according to their operational characteristics. These bids are constructed considering direct shipments (Truckload operations) and several biding advisory models have been proposed for this purpose. However, there are economies of scale that can be achieved if shipments are consolidated inside vehicles, which have not been explored in the construction of competitive bids. This paper investigates such benefits and provides insights on the competitiveness and challenges associated to the development of consolidated bids (suitable for Less-Than-Truckload operations). Consolidated bids are constructed using a multi-commodity one-to-one pickup-and-delivery vehicle routing problem that is solved using a branch-and-price algorithm. The numerical experiment shows that non-consolidated bids are dominated by consolidated bids, which implies that this type of operation can increase the likelihood of a carrier to win auctioned lanes, while increasing its profits margins over truckload companies (non-consolidated bids), and keeping the reported benefits that combinatorial auctions represent for shippers.     

农村集体建设用地流转地权的激励模式

农村集体建设用地流转中存在严重的资金时差悖论,导致难以利用集体土地本身进行融资,土地整理融资难反过来又成为阻碍集体建设用地流转的瓶颈性因素。现有流转模式难以协调各种利益,不能对流转各方产生足够激励,变相征地的方式削弱了农民的土地持续收益能力,未能真正实现城乡建设用地"同质、同价、同权"。因此,应根据利益协调的原则创新制度设计,以地权激励引导社会资源投入,促进集体建设用地顺畅流转。     

新时期国土综合整治分类体系初探

研究目的:按照"自上而下"思路,借鉴人地关系思想,构建国土综合整治内涵解析框架,提出国土综合整治分类体系,探讨分类体系的规划衔接与落实途径。研究方法:文献分析法、理论分析法、对比分析法。研究结果:(1)根据国土综合整治的多层次性,提出了从内涵解析到广义国土综合整治分类到新时期国土综合整治分类的分类体系构建思路;(2)按照"空间—系统—途径"逻辑,依据尺度性、独立性、综合性、稳定性、开放性等原则提出了广义国土综合整治分类框架;(3)通过梳理国土空间相关规划中国土综合整治的目标、类型与定位,结合当前管理制度和国土空间规划定位,构建了包括5个大类、11个亚类和23个小类的国土综合整治分类体系,提出了不同类型的整治导向和参考指标,分析了分类体系的落实途径。研究结论:新时期国土综合整治分类体系构建应以内涵解析为基础,以行业管理要求和国土空间规划体系定位为分类依据,体现整治对象和目标的综合性、分类框架的系统性与动态性以及分类结果的可实践性。     

Disaggregation and consolidation of imperfect quality shipments in an extended EPQ model

We consider a standard economic production quantity (EPQ) model. Due to manufacturing variability, a fraction P of the produced inventory will have imperfect quality, where P is a random variable with a known distribution. We consider a 100% inspection policy and further assume that the inspection rate is larger than that of production. Thus, all imperfect quality items will be detected by the end of the production cycle. For such an augmented EPQ model, we first derive the new optimal production quantity assuming that the imperfect quality items are salvaged once at the end of every production cycle. Then, we extend this base model to allow for disaggregating the shipments of imperfect quality items during a single production run. Finally, we consider aggregating (or consolidating) the shipments of imperfect items over multiple production runs. Under both scenarios we derive closed-form expressions for both the economic production quantity and the batching policy, and show that our desegregation/consolidation schemes can lead to significant cost savings over the base model.     

Democratic revolutions as institutional innovation diffusion: Rapid adoption and survival of democracy

Recent ‘democratic revolutions’ in Islamic countries call for a re-consideration of transitions to and from democracy. Transitions to democracy have often been considered the outcome of socio-economic modernization and therefore slow and incremental processes. But as a recent study has made clear, in the last century, transitions to democracy have mainly occurred through rapid leaps rather than slow and incremental steps. Here, we therefore apply an innovation and systems perspective and consider transitions to democracy as processes of institutional, and therefore systemic, innovation adoption. We show that transitions to democracy starting before 1900 lasted for an average of 50 years and a median of 56 years, while transitions originating later took an average of 4.6 years and a median of 1.7 years. However, our results indicate that the survival time of democratic regimes is longer in cases where the transition periods have also been longer, suggesting that patience paid in previous democratizations. We identify a critical ‘consolidation-preparing’ transition period of 12 years. Our results also show that in cases where the transitions have not been made directly from autocracy to democracy, there are no main institutional paths towards democracy. Instead, democracy seems reachable from a variety of directions. This is in line with the analogy of diffusion of innovations at the nation systems level, for which assumptions are that potential adopter systems may vary in susceptibility over time. The adoption of the institutions of democracy therefore corresponds to the adoption of a new political communications standard for a nation, in this case the innovation of involving in principle all adult citizens on an equal basis.