Fiscal discipline and economic growth – the case of Romania

The fiscal and budgetary policy should play a key role to alleviate the impact of the business cycle on the real economy. Procyclical fiscal policy is particularly undesirable in developing countries, as it not only exacerbates the business cycle, but also the high output volatility hurts the poorest people with low safety net. This paper assesses the structural budget deficit in Romania during 2000-2009 and evaluates the role of the fiscal policy during the business cycle. The paper concludes that the fiscal policy in Romania was highly procyclical, exacerbating the economic cycle. In order to escape from this procyclicality, Romania needs deep structural reforms in order to restore the sustainability of the public finances and put Romania on a sustainable growth path.structural budget balance, procyclicality of fiscal policy, fiscal discipline

Fiscal discipline and economic growth – the case of Romania

The fiscal and budgetary policy should play a key role to alleviate the impact of the business cycle on the real economy. Procyclical fiscal policy is particularly undesirable in developing countries, as it not only exacerbates the business cycle, but also the high output volatility hurts the poorest people with low safety net. This paper assesses the structural budget deficit in Romania during 2000- 2009 and evaluates the role of the fiscal policy during the business cycle. The paper concludes that the fiscal policy in Romania was highly procyclical, exacerbating the economic cycle. In order to escape from this procyclicality, Romania needs deep structural reforms in order to restore the sustainability of the public finances and put Romania on a sustainable growth path.structural budget balance, procyclicality of fiscal policy, fiscal discipline

Ploughmen's Society. A Prosopography of an Agrarian Community from Transylvania on the Eve of Modernity

The East Central European peasantry, caught in the inescapability of history, actively participated in the major events that defined this space during the modern period. In the complex rural society of the Transylvanian Romanian ploughmen, which makes the subject of this work, the outside world was both a mirage and a mundane experience. Treated as homogenous assembles, as unitary masses, and often reproduced by the grand historiographical narratives of the past century from the perspective of a class struggle, the peasantry was repeatedly unjustifiably martyrised. Even when this was not the case, the interest showed to the Transylvanian village remained dominated by specific themes questioning the development of the institutions rather than of the population that upheld them. Constructing on these previous historiographical efforts, the main questions addressed in this research aim to discover who the members of this rural society are and what drove them to adapt and accept novelty in the face of the constant challenges of history. Requiring a permanent balance between accessing personal stories and connecting those stories to the significant historical events that were taking place in Transylvania and Europe in general, mixed-method research was employed using townhall records, parish records and correspondence, civil status records, newspapers and periodicals, oral history interviews and a series of ego documents such as photography and memoirs. Revealing individualities whose acceptance of tradition was constructed in accordance with their pragmatic desideratum, the members of this agrarian society, that dominated the Transylvanian social landscape until the twentieth century, embraced change as a perquisite of survival, resulting in surprisingly original answers

Various results concerning homogenisation of nematic liquid crystals

164 p.In this tesis we present various results concerning homogenisation ofnematic liquid crystals: two of them are in perforated domains, while the other oneconcerns rates of convergence for boundary homogenisation. The first workdescribed in this thesis is a Γ-convergence result for the Landau-de Gennes model in 3D domains with connected perforations. The goal of the analysis is to find newterms in the energy functional that are independent of the gradient. The secondresult is an error estimate for a 2D toy model used to describe rugosity effects innematic liquid crystals via homogenisation problems, using once again the LandaudeGennes model. The last problem is a local L2-convergence result for ahomogenisation problem in R2 with isolated perforations. Here we use the Oseen-Frank model, with the goal of finding new gradient-dependent terms in the energyfunctionalThis research is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness MINECO through BCAM Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation SEV-2013-0323-17-1 (BES-2017-080630) and through project MTM2017-82184-R funded by (AEI/FEDER, UE) and acronym “DESFLU”

CASH FLOW REPORTING AND CREATIVE ACCOUNTING

Within the wide field of creative accounting, the main preoccupation of researchers surrounded earnings management. The current study comes to acknowledge that creative cash flow may distort the assessment of financial performance and should therefore, become a subject of the same interest for analysts and investors, as earnings management is. In order to reach the objective proposed, there are two hypotheses formulated, to be validated within the research: H1: Creative accounting distorts cash flow reporting within the boundaries of current regulations. H2: Real activity manipulation alters significantly the operating cash flow. The steps followed were analyzing the accounting standard related to cash flow statement, IAS 7, in order to uncover issues not taken into account, or options of allocation provided for accountants, which could lead to opportunistic choices and lack of comparability. The relevant literature was reviewed, so as to identify the opinions of accounting and finance specialists related to this subject, the results of their scientific process. The final step was a synthesis of relevant results and observations, which lead to the acceptance of the hypothesis of the research. Moreover, several techniques were identified, both related to creative accounting and to real activity manipulation, influencing mainly the figure reflecting operating cash flow, and thus the image on the potential of business continuity. Main conclusions were that the techniques applied were within the limits set by the standard: opportunistic allocation of dividends and interest collected or paid misallocation of certain activities like sale of receivables, but mainly recording non-recurring events into the operating cash flow, without separate notes of information or adjustments. Real activity manipulation should also be considered as it is even more difficult to detect, unless analysis is also performed on notes to financial reports and the figures within the profit and loss account. The contribution of the current study is providing a synthetic arrgumentation to why cash flow should be analysed in the context of creative accounting, reviewing methods and techniques that distort significantly the results of operating activity, providing basis for further study related to the impact of such practices on forecasts of cash flow and predictability of bankruptcy.operating cash flow, creative accounting, non-recurring activity, IAS 7, financial performance

FROM THE HARMONIZATION NEED TO THE SPONTANEOUS ACCOUNTING HARMONIZATION

The issue of international accounting harmonization has achieved, mainly within the last decade, a significant dimension in the field of international accounting research. The main determinant factor for this state of the art is the process aiming at red

FREE CASH FLOW AS PART OF VOLUNTARY REPORTING. LITERATURE REVIEW

The present study has as main objective to reflect the state of literature regarding free cash flow, and to withdraw the main pro's and con's in order to create an objective image upon this indicator. The main idea generating this research was the growing interest on cash flow reporting. As many say, "Cash Flow is King", while in Anglo Saxon countries the interest of investors and analysts in concentrated on operating cash flow, as the most important indicator of the probability of bankruptcy. In this context, voluntary additional reporting, like free cash flow may come either as an aid in providing the fair view or as an opportunistically reported figure. Throughout the paper, the intention was to provide answers to three main research questions: "What are the definition and calculation method of free cash flow? Why is there an interest in free cash flow reporting? What is the impact of free cash flow on the agency theory?" In order to provide relevant conclusions, four international data basis were used, and related articles and studies were extracted. The results proved that there is no generally accepted definition and computing method, while the format depends on the end-user of the report (shareholders, investors, analysts, bankers, a.s.o.). As stated below, this aspect generates confusion and lack of comparability, giving room to creative accounting techniques. Moreover, the interest on free cash flow reporting is connected mainly to liquidity assessment, company valuation and investors' choice. Still, in the context of agency theory, results show that in presence of high free cash flow, managers tend to make investment choices that satisfy their personal interest and that generate low efficiency and profitability for the company. The contribution to current state of research is providing a literature review study, focused on a comparative approach, as well as on underlying an objective image upon a debatable financial indicator and accounting report.free cash flow, reporting, management, agency theory, creative accounting

MEASUREMENT OF NEED FOR HARMONIZATION BETWEEN NATIONAL ACCOUNTING STANDARDS AND INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL REPORTING STANDARDS

This study analyzes the quantification methods of the harmonization degree between the national accounting settlements and the international accounting standards. Starting from the presentation of the main methods used for this purpose such as - Euclidean distances, Jaccard’s coefficients, Spearman’s coefficients and other nonparametric methods for rank correlation analysis – we suggest a method of quantification for the need of harmonization between the national accounting standards and the financial reporting international ones. Beyond the certainty of a quantification model foe this need, we analyze in the present study the situation of 33 states selected through reporting at a global level. The main achievement of this study is represented by the concept of pre-formal harmonization and the method to quantify it, strongly connected with the general accepted concepts of formal and material harmonization of accounting.financial reporting standards, pre-formal harmonization, measurement of harmonization

Motivating Accounting Professionals in Romania. Analysis after Five Decades of Communist Ideology and Two Decades of Accounting Harmonization

Our paper focuses on accounting professionals in Romania as being a significant element when considering a national accounting system that went through complex accounting reforms of more than two decades. Since accounting policy represents an area of social and economic policy we must also consider the five decades of communist regime leaving their fingerprint on the Romanian society. It is our objective to capture the perception of the Romanian accounting profession that actually witnessed all these processes of transformation. More precisely we focus on exploring the motivational pattern of Romanian accounting professionals, arguing that our results could offer useful insights when it comes to accountants’ drivers to participate in the international accounting arena and therefore in the international accounting harmonization process. Our theoretical framework is based on Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory. Since Herzberg in his studies used the interview method, for more consistency, we found an interview-based qualitative approach to be the most appropriate to our research. One of our conclusions is that Herzberg’s theory can identify and explain reasonably well the motivational factors of today’s Romanian accounting professionals. However, the theory must be adjusted for higher relevance: (1) salary is not seen hygiene but a motivator, (2) advancement is not a motivator but hygiene, and (3) team/staff with strong motivational effect must be added to the model. Motivators and Hygiene factors were directly related to the level of hierarchy and redrafted a different pattern within the structure of an entity. By analyzing the information being obtained through the interview process, our paper offers an overview on the particular work environment that characterizes the accounting professional of late Romanian modernity, after five decades of an ideology based system. The results of the performed analysis document the fact that alienation and dependence have not become characteristics of the modern accounting professional. Furthermore, dehumanization and exploitation prove to be, in the case of the Romanian accounting system, inevitable consequences of the division of labor and the development of private property.Drivers, Motivators, Hygiene Factors, Job Satisfaction, Labor Behavior, Organizational Culture, Human Resource Accounting

THE IMPACT OF GLOBALIZATION ON REGULATIONS AND ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS. DIMENSIONING AND QUANTIFICATION.

In this study we concentrate our efforts on the consequences that the existence and manifestation of globalization have on various domains of human activity. The impact of globalization will be analyzed from the perspective of the cause-effect relationship, with a special emphasis on the consequences of the phenomenon. A special part of our scientific demarche is reserved to the accounting sphere. We try to create a new dimension on the basement of relations between globalization and accounting systems. Globalization represents a new dimension of our world. The accounting domain is today into real connections with phenomenon of globalization. In this context, our main objectives are represented by the research demarche to create a model of quantification the impact of globalization on regulations and accounting systems. We believe that such a model of quantification could be real and its contributions to scientific development will be considerable.Globalization, International Accounting, Impact, Quantification