Financial reporting demands in a globalised world: The harmonisation of accounting rules

OECD accounting regimes have significantly changed over the last three decades. Financial reporting rules for (public) companies have become more similar, and the ways in which accounting rules are set and enforced have converged. This paper explores to what extent (financial) globalisation drives convergence of financial reporting systems. We analyse globalisation developments and changes in accounting regulation in six large OECD countries: Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan and the USA. We identify changes in the demand and supply patters of accounting regulation, and present empirical evidence for the concurrence of financial globalisation and accounting harmonisation. A newly developed financial globalisation index and changes in accounting regulation are jointly analysed. We find that the analysed countries have experienced distinct waves of globalisation since the beginning of the 1970s and that these waves coincide with a delayed accounting harmonisation. -- Die Rechnungslegungssysteme der OECD-Staaten haben sich in den letzten drei Jahrzehnten erheblich verändert. Für kapitalmarktorientierte Unternehmen sind die Rechnungslegungsregeln ähnlicher geworden, und auch die Wege zur Entwicklung und Durchsetzung von Rechnungslegungsnormen haben sich angeglichen. Dieser Beitrag untersucht, in welchem Ausmaß die (finanzielle) Globalisierung eine Konvergenz von Rechnungslegungssystemen vorantreibt. Analysiert werden Globalisierungsentwicklungen und Veränderungen von Rechnungslegungsregulierung in den sechs großen OECD-Staaten: Deutschland, Frankreich, Großbritannien, Japan, Kanada und den USA. Muster im Angebots- und Nachfrageverhalten bezüglich der Regulierung von Rechnungslegung werden untersucht, und dabei wird empirische Evidenz für einen Zusammenfallen von finanzieller Globalisierung und Harmonisierung der Rechnungslegung gefunden. Für die untersuchten Länder können seit Beginn der 1970er Jahre verschiedene Wellen der Globalisierung festgestellt werden, die, zeitlich versetzt, mit einer Harmonisierung von Rechnungslegung korrelieren.

The scope of jurisdiction of self-governing appellate tribunals

Prezentowany artykuł został wprawdzie napisany z okazji 25-lecia samorządowych kolegiów odwoławczych, nie jest on jednak okolicznościową laurką. Zwraca on uwagę na te cechy samorządowych kolegiów odwoławczych, które mają charakter węzłowy, nieraz dyskusyjny, ale które świadczą o wysokiej wadze i klasie omawianej instytucji.Autor wychodzi od zagadnień konstytucyjnych, wskazując, że chociaż obowiązująca Konstytucja RP nie wspomina o kolegiach, to jednak szereg jej uregulowań ma wpływ na ich kształt. Rozwiewa on tu wątpliwości dotyczące tego, czy kolegia są rzeczywiście organami zdecentralizowanymi i czy są one organami samorządowymi, a także analizuje przepis Konstytucji o zaskarżalności wszelkich orzeczeń w toku instancji. Tu właśnie pojawia się po raz pierwszy tytułowa „ranga jurysdykcyjna” kolegiów.Druga część opracowania dotyczy ustroju i organizacji kolegiów i zawiera m.in. dyskusję z koncepcją zmniejszenia liczby kolegiów, a także omawia delikatne relacje między kolegiami a administracją rządową. Kolejny punkt dotyczy aksjologicznych aspektów funkcjonowania kolegiów, zwłaszcza aksjologii administracyjnego toku instancji i jurysdykcji administracyjnej. Przedstawiono tu katalog wartości, które stanowią tło istnienia i funkcjonowania kolegiów. Punkt ostatni zaś dotyka praktyki działania kolegiów i jej licznych problemów.Na zakończenie autor stwierdza, że kolegia są wielką wartością, którą należy chronić i szanować. Wyraża on stanowcze życzenie, żeby nie przeprowadzać drastycznych zmian w zakresie organizacji i funkcjonowania kolegiów. Nie można pozwolić nie tylko na rozwijanie skrajnych pomysłów likwidacji kolegiów, ale także na koncepcje pozbawienia ich należnej im roli przez likwidację lub „spłaszczenie” odwołania administracyjnego, wreszcie przez pozbawienie ich możliwości wydawania orzeczeń merytorycznych.Although this paper has been written on the twenty-fifth anniversary of self-governing appellate tribunals, it is not meant to be a flattering birthday card. Its purpose is rather to identify the most characteristic features underlying self-governing appellate tribunals which, even if their role or functioning is sometimes disputable, nevertheless prove their high quality and merits.The paper starts with constitutional issues. Although there is no mention of tribunals in the current Constitution, a number of its provisions apply to them. As can be understood from them, appellate tribunals are, beyond doubt, decentralised and self-governing bodies. What is more, an analysis of the constitutional provision regarding challenges to all judicial decisions brings tolight, for the first time, the question of the ‘scope of jurisdiction’ of self-governing appellate tribunals which is the subject of this paper.The second part of the paper concerns the regime and organisation of appellate tribunals and it tackles, among other things, the delicate relationships between appellate tribunals and the government administration. The next point discussed in the paper concerns the axiological aspects of the functioning of appellate tribunals. The catalogue of values presented in this part constitutes the background underlying the existence and functioning of appellate tribunals. The last part touches upon the practical problems which appellate tribunals encounter.Concluding, it is stated that appellate tribunals constitute an important value which must be protected and respected. It is also strongly recommended that no drastic changes in their organisation or functioning be made. The extreme voices calling for the liquidation of appellate tribunals should be disallowed, in the same way as attempts to deprive appellate tribunals of their role by abolition of the right of an administrative appeal or their power to issue decisions

Characterizing a Meta-CDN

CDNs have reshaped the Internet architecture at large. They operate (globally) distributed networks of servers to reduce latencies as well as to increase availability for content and to handle large traffic bursts. Traditionally, content providers were mostly limited to a single CDN operator. However, in recent years, more and more content providers employ multiple CDNs to serve the same content and provide the same services. Thus, switching between CDNs, which can be beneficial to reduce costs or to select CDNs by optimal performance in different geographic regions or to overcome CDN-specific outages, becomes an important task. Services that tackle this task emerged, also known as CDN broker, Multi-CDN selectors, or Meta-CDNs. Despite their existence, little is known about Meta-CDN operation in the wild. In this paper, we thus shed light on this topic by dissecting a major Meta-CDN. Our analysis provides insights into its infrastructure, its operation in practice, and its usage by Internet sites. We leverage PlanetLab and Ripe Atlas as distributed infrastructures to study how a Meta-CDN impacts the web latency

Convergence patterns in accounting regulation: Six country cases of the transforming regulatory landscape

This paper inquires into recent changes of accounting regulation in six OECD countries: Germany, France, England, USA, Canada and Japan. Having formerly been embedded into different institutional environments, accounting systems varied widely in the heyday of the interventionist nation state. Since then, international harmonisation has been transforming national accounting systems, leading to increasing convergence between the various systems. It is the aim of this paper to describe these changes systematically, estimate the degree of international convergence and assess how different institutional origins affect convergence patterns. We develop a framework for comparing accounting systems and identify four criteria that describe the anatomy of a national accounting system: (1) Predominant uses of accounting, (2) Extent of professional self-regulation, (3) Legal backing and (4) Degree of internationalisation. Our findings indicate that global convergence in accounting regulation exists, although limited variations between nation states still remain and depend upon the prevailing national institutional arrangements, which have not (yet) converged. -- Gegenstand des vorliegenden Arbeitspapieres ist die Aufarbeitung des Wandels der Regulierung von Rechnungslegung vom goldenen Zeitalter des Nationalstaats bis heute. Dies erfolgt für die sechs größten OECD Staaten, Deutschland, Frankreich, das Vereinigte Königreich als EU-Fälle und die Vereinigten Staaten, Kanada und Japan als Fälle außerhalb der EU. Traditionell unterscheiden sich die Rechnungslegungssysteme in diesen Ländern aufgrund ihrer Einbindung in institutionelle Rahmenbedingungen wie etwa dem Finanz- oder Rechtssystem. Ziel des Arbeitspapieres ist es zu untersuchen, in welchem Umfang es durch die internationalen Harmonisierungsbemühungen zu einer Konvergenz der Rechnungslegung gekommen ist und wie der Anpassungsprozess durch die unterschiedlichen institutionellen Arrangements beeinflusst wurde. Die Darstellung der Entwicklungen erfolgt anhand von vier Kategorien: (1) dem vorherrschenden Rechnungszweck, (2) dem Ausmaß an (staatsfreier) Selbstregulierung, (3) der rechtlichen Absicherung und (4) dem Grad an Internationalisierung der Rechnungslegung. Unsere Ergebnisse deuten auf eine Konvergenz in weiten Teilen der Regulierung von Rechnungslegung hin. Diese werden jedoch vom Fortbestehen nationaler Präferenzen insbesondere im Bereich der Anspruchsbemessung begleitet.

Emergent collective chemotaxis without single-cell gradient sensing

Many eukaryotic cells chemotax, sensing and following chemical gradients. However, experiments have shown that even under conditions when single cells cannot chemotax, small clusters may still follow a gradient. This behavior has been observed in neural crest cells, in lymphocytes, and during border cell migration in Drosophila, but its origin remains puzzling. Here, we propose a new mechanism underlying this "collective guidance", and study a model based on this mechanism both analytically and computationally. Our approach posits that the contact inhibition of locomotion (CIL), where cells polarize away from cell-cell contact, is regulated by the chemoattractant. Individual cells must measure the mean attractant value, but need not measure its gradient, to give rise to directional motility for a cell cluster. We present analytic formulas for how cluster velocity and chemotactic index depend on the number and organization of cells in the cluster. The presence of strong orientation effects provides a simple test for our theory of collective guidance.Comment: Updated with additional simulations. Aspects of v1 of this paper about adaptation and amplification have been extended and turned into a separate paper, and removed from the current versio

Collective signal processing in cluster chemotaxis: roles of adaptation, amplification, and co-attraction in collective guidance

Single eukaryotic cells commonly sense and follow chemical gradients, performing chemotaxis. Recent experiments and theories, however, show that even when single cells do not chemotax, clusters of cells may, if their interactions are regulated by the chemoattractant. We study this general mechanism of "collective guidance" computationally with models that integrate stochastic dynamics for individual cells with biochemical reactions within the cells, and diffusion of chemical signals between the cells. We show that if clusters of cells use the well-known local excitation, global inhibition (LEGI) mechanism to sense chemoattractant gradients, the speed of the cell cluster becomes non-monotonic in the cluster's size - clusters either larger or smaller than an optimal size will have lower speed. We argue that the cell cluster speed is a crucial readout of how the cluster processes chemotactic signal; both amplification and adaptation will alter the behavior of cluster speed as a function of size. We also show that, contrary to the assumptions of earlier theories, collective guidance does not require persistent cell-cell contacts and strong short range adhesion to function. If cell-cell adhesion is absent, and the cluster cohesion is instead provided by a co-attraction mechanism, e.g. chemotaxis toward a secreted molecule, collective guidance may still function. However, new behaviors, such as cluster rotation, may also appear in this case. Together, the combination of co-attraction and adaptation allows for collective guidance that is robust to varying chemoattractant concentrations while not requiring strong cell-cell adhesion.Comment: This article extends some results previously presented in arXiv:1506.0669