Financial accounting and reporting in Germany: A case study on German accounting tradition and experiences with the IFRS adoption

Financial accounting is rooted in national thoughts, traditions and institutional settings. As a consequence, accounting has developed heterogeneously over time and fulfilled contracting purposes in divergent national environments. Against this background, we argue that the ongoing process of accounting internationalization and imposed harmonization carries with it the danger of deforming country-specific balancing factors in the accounting systems, especially when the national environment for economic and contractual activities is not harmonized at all. In contrast to more evolutionary integration and adjustment processes of the past where spillover effects have always existed, the rapidity of the current process and coercive nature increases country-specific frictions. To support our argument and to substantiate the interplay of accounting as a contractual device and country-specific characteristics, we provide an in-depth case study of one country, Germany. We illustrate how the traditional German commercial law accounting system has evolved over time to meet specific contractual needs. We demonstrate how the current process of globalization and accounting internationalization has been attended by increasing frictions and challenges, especially on the contractual and regulatory level. We finally investigate the consequences on the German standard setting system, which also includes the changing role of German accounting research.Als standardisierte Kommunikation zwischen Unternehmensbeteiligten wurzelt Rechnungslegung stets auch in nationalen Traditionen, Konzepten und institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen. Insofern verwundert es nicht, dass sich Rechnungslegung weltweit heterogen entwickelt hat und unter unterschiedlichen nationalen Bedingungen unterschiedlichen Zwecken folgt. Dabei birgt die seit Jahren zu beobachtende Internationalisierung und oktroyierte Harmonisierung der Rechnungslegung die Gefahr, landesspezifische (Ausgleichs-)Faktoren in der Rechnungslegung zu nivellieren, obwohl sonstige Rahmenbedingungen unternehmerischer Aktivität keineswegs harmonisiert sind. Im Gegensatz zu den eher evolutorischen Integrations- und Anpassungsprozessen der Vergangenheit, in denen Einflüsse anderer Systeme durchaus erkennbar waren, dürften die Schnelligkeit und der regulatorische Zwangscharakter des gegenwärtigen Prozesses landesspezifische Friktionen erzeugen. Um diese Argumentation zu untermauern und um das komplexe Zusammenspiel von Rechnungslegung als Vertragskoordinationsinstrument mit landesspezifischen Rahmenbedingungen zu verdeutlichen, wird eine detaillierte Fallstudie präsentiert, die auf ein einziges Land, Deutschland, zielt. Darin wird aufgezeigt wie sich handelsrechtliche, deutsche Bilanzierungstradition vor dem Hintergrund spezifischer Koordinationsbedürfnisse historisch entwickelt hat. Untersucht werden zudem die Friktionen und Herausforderungen auf unternehmensvertraglicher wie auch regulatorischer Ebene, die durch den gegenwärtigen Internationalisierungsprozess in der Rechnungslegung ausgelöst werden. Die Untersuchung schließt die dahingehenden Konsequenzen für das System der deutschen Rechnungslegungsregulierung und für die Rechnungslegungsforschung mit ein

Temporal Connectivity: Coping with Foreseen and Unforeseen Delays

Consider planning a trip in a train network. In contrast to, say, a road network, the edges are temporal, i.e., they are only available at certain times. Another important difficulty is that trains, unfortunately, sometimes get delayed. This is especially bad if it causes one to miss subsequent trains. The best way to prepare against this is to have a connection that is robust to some number of (small) delays. An important factor in determining the robustness of a connection is how far in advance delays are announced. We give polynomial-time algorithms for the two extreme cases: delays known before departure and delays occurring without prior warning (the latter leading to a two-player game scenario). Interestingly, in the latter case, we show that the problem becomes PSPACE-complete if the itinerary is demanded to be a path

Delay-Robust Routes in Temporal Graphs

Most transportation networks are inherently temporal: Connections (e.g. flights, train runs) are only available at certain, scheduled times. When transporting passengers or commodities, this fact must be considered for the the planning of itineraries. This has already led to several well-studied algorithmic problems on temporal graphs. The difficulty of the described task is increased by the fact that connections are often unreliable - in particular, many modes of transportation suffer from occasional delays. If these delays cause subsequent connections to be missed, the consequences can be severe. Thus, it is a vital problem to design itineraries that are robust to (small) delays. We initiate the study of this problem from a parameterized complexity perspective by proving its NP-completeness as well as several hardness and tractability results for natural parameterizations

Alexei Miller, The Romanov Empire and Nationalism

A new imperial history of the Russian Empire hardly breaks new ground — reprints of older publications show that this paradigm shift is well established by now. However, Alexei Miller’s anthology demonstrates that this approach can still pose stimulating questions and provide complex and unexpected answers. The book presents more than a welcomed English collection of Miller’s main publications: some of the contributions are new, some have undergone “significant changes,” as the author puts it..

Norm, Abweichung und Aneignung: kulturelle Konventionen und unkonventionelle Kulturen in der Nachkriegssowjetunion

'Der Verfasser zeigt in seinem Beitrag, dass die genormte Standardkultur in Gestalt einer 'inneren Sowjetisierung' der Gesellschaft dennoch Freiräume für abweichende Kulturpraktiken ließ. Innerhalb des kulturellen Korsetts gab es zahlreiche Nischen, in denen über die individuelle Aneignung Kreativität und Subjektivität entwickelt werden konnten. Dabei handelte es sich um keine radikale Gegenkultur, aber um eigenwillige, von der Norm abweichende Akzentsetzungen. Aus solchen Ansätzen konnte sich allerdings eine grundsätzliche Opposition zum Regime entwickeln, wie der Autor am Beispiel der 'singenden' Revolution in den baltischen Staaten illustriert. In den akzeptierten 'Kreisen der künstlerischen Selbsttätigkeit' hatte sich in vielen sowjetischen Teilstaaten ein traditionelles nationales Folklorerepertoire erhalten, das sich zwar mit Elementen all-sowjetischer Kulturnormen verschmolz, aber auch Resistenzpotential freizusetzen in der Lage war. Diese neuen Handlungsräume ermöglichten in einem dynamischen Prozess unter anderem die Option, am Ersten Mai auf dem Roten Platz für die nationale Unabhängigkeit zu demonstrieren. Auf diese Weise kam es zur Umwertung sowjetischer Normen.' (Textauszug)'The article discusses the relationship between officially decreed culture norms and their unconventional implementation in the Soviet Union. It discusses the Soviet culture canon and its relevance in the creation of societal hierarchies and the possibilities of its individual reception. The Baltic Soviet Republics' independence movements show how the practice of the stubborn implementation of cultural norms exploded the Soviet frame of reference and mutated into open resistance.' (author's abstract)

The Romanov Empire and NationalismAlexei MILLER

Alexei MILLER, The Romanov Empire and Nationalism, Essays in the Methodology of Historical Research, Budapest — New York : Central European University Press, 2008, 242 p. A new imperial history of the Russian Empire hardly breaks new ground — reprints of older publications show that this paradigm shift is well established by now. However, Alexei Miller’s anthology demonstrates that this approach can still pose stimulating questions and provide complex and unexpected answers. The book presents..

Alexei Miller, The Romanov Empire and Nationalism

A new imperial history of the Russian Empire hardly breaks new ground — reprints of older publications show that this paradigm shift is well established by now. However, Alexei Miller’s anthology demonstrates that this approach can still pose stimulating questions and provide complex and unexpected answers. The book presents more than a welcomed English collection of Miller’s main publications: some of the contributions are new, some have undergone “significant changes,” as the author puts it..

Most Classic Problems Remain NP-hard on Relative Neighborhood Graphs and their Relatives

Proximity graphs have been studied for several decades, motivated by applications in computational geometry, geography, data mining, and many other fields. However, the computational complexity of classic graph problems on proximity graphs mostly remained open. We now study 3-Colorability, Dominating Set, Feedback Vertex Set, Hamiltonian Cycle, and Independent Set on the proximity graph classes relative neighborhood graphs, Gabriel graphs, and relatively closest graphs. We prove that all of the problems remain NP-hard on these graphs, except for 3-Colorability and Hamiltonian Cycle on relatively closest graphs, where the former is trivial and the latter is left open. Moreover, for every NP-hard case we additionally show that no $2^{o(n^{1/4})}$-time algorithm exists unless the ETH fails, where n denotes the number of vertices

Haemorrhagic pseudocyst of the pancreatic tail causing acute abdominal pain in a 12-year-old girl

Pancreatic disorders are a relatively uncommon event in children, particularly the development of pancreatic pseudocysts. The most common cause for the development of such pseudocysts is blunt abdominal trauma with injury of the pancreatic parenchyma. Further aetiologies include congenital anomalies of the pancreatic duct such as pancreatic divisum, hereditary or idiopathic pancreatitis. Various treatment options for pancreatic pseudocysts including internal or external drainage have been described. We describe the case of a 12-year-old girl with acute abdominal pain and a left-sided retroperitoneal tumour. She underwent laparotomy to identify the aetiology of her severe abdominal pain. A haemorrhagic pancreatic pseudocyst was identified as the underlying pathology. Internal drainage by pseudocyst jejunostomy was performed. The postoperative course was uneventful. The underlying aetiology of the pseudocyst remains unclear. As there was no  previous history of pancreatitis, unrecognized blunt trauma was the most likely  cause.Keywords: childhood, haemorrhage, pancreatic pseudocyst, retroperitoneal tumou