The discount rate: a note on IAS 36

Measurement in financial accounting often requires determining an interest rate to discount future cash flows. One example is the International Accounting Standard (IAS)36 Impairment of assets. IAS 36´s impairment test requires determining a value in use (a present value). The Appendix A to the standard gives some guidance on how to determine a suitable discount rate. In this paper, we show that the different approaches included in IAS 36´s guidance are theoretically different. We discuss how the standard should be interpreted and applied based on the theoretical background of financial theory. Only the first alternative, we weighted cost of capital should be used and the other two alternatives should be discarded. In addition, we show that IAS 36´s guidance, applied in practice, may give rise to substential measurement errors. --

On the fine structure of the quiet solar \Ca II K atmosphere

We investigate the morphological, dynamical, and evolutionary properties of the internetwork and network fine structure of the quiet sun at disk centre. The analysis is based on a $\sim$6 h time sequence of narrow-band filtergrams centred on the inner-wing \Ca II K$_{\rm 2v}$ reversal at 393.3 nm. The results for the internetwork are related to predictions derived from numerical simulations of the quiet sun. The average evolutionary time scale of the internetwork in our observations is 52 sec. Internetwork grains show a tendency to appear on a mesh-like pattern with a mean cell size of $\sim$4-5 arcsec. Based on this size and the spatial organisation of the mesh we speculate that this pattern is related to the existence of photospheric downdrafts as predicted by convection simulations. The image segmentation shows that typical sizes of both network and internetwork grains are in the order of 1.6 arcs.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

Missing growth measurement in Germany

Using detailed establishment-level micro data, this paper analyzes for the German case the hypothesis by Aghion, Bergeaud, Boppart, Klenow, and Li (2019), stating that officially published figures for real output growth would be systematically understated. The effect rests on overstated inflation estimates due to imputed prices for disappearing goods and services varieties, where measurable plant entry and exit dynamics play a crucial rule. Our main results regarding understated real output growth lie in the range of 0:39 to 0:54 average annual percentage points for 1998-2016, which is quite closely in line with existing findings for France, the USA, and Japan (in different periods). We also find that services sectors appear most affected, and that the effect in East Germany is somewhat larger. We investigate different market share proxies, provide additional robustness analysis and also discuss limitations of the approach

Comparing Techniques for Mobile Interaction with Objects from the Real World.

Mobile interaction with objects from the real world is gaining in popularity and importance as different mobile technologies increasingly provide the basis for the extraction and usage of information from physical objects. So far, Physical Mobile Interaction is used in rather simple ways. This paper presents a comparison and evaluation of more complex and sophisticated techniques for Physical Mobile Interaction. The results indicate the importance of usability guidelines that pay attention to these new interaction techniques