Support for graphicacy: a review of textbooks available to accounting students

This Teaching Note reports on the support available in textbooks for graphicacy that will help students understand the complexities of graphical displays. Graphical displays play a significant role in financial reporting, and studies have found evidence of measurement distortion and selection bias. To understand the complexities of graphical displays, students need a sound understanding of graphicacy and support from the textbooks available to them to develop that understanding. The Teaching Note reports on a survey that examined the textbooks available to students attending two Scottish universities. The support of critical graphicacy skills was examined in conjunction with textbook characteristics. The survey, which was not restricted to textbooks designated as required reading, examined the textbooks for content on data measurement and graphical displays. The findings highlight a lack of support for graphicacy in the textbooks selected. The study concludes that accounting educators need to scrutinize more closely the selection of textbooks and calls for more extensive research into textbooks as a pedagogic tool

A new method for ranking academic journals in accounting and finance

Given the many and varied uses to which journal rankings are put, interest in ranking journal 'quality' is likely to persist. Unfortunately, existing methods of constructing such rankings all have inherent limitations. This paper proposes a new (complementary) approach, based on submissions to RAE 2001, which is not restricted to a pre-defined journal set and, importantly, is based on quality choice decisions driven by economic incentives. For three metrics, submissions to RAE 2001 are compared with the available set of publications to provide evidence on the perception of journal quality, a fourth metric is based on the overall RAE grades, and an overall ranking is produced

Air entrainment through free-surface cusps

In many industrial processes, such as pouring a liquid or coating a rotating cylinder, air bubbles are entrapped inside the liquid. We propose a novel mechanism for this phenomenon, based on the instability of cusp singularities that generically form on free surfaces. The air being drawn into the narrow space inside the cusp destroys its stationary shape when the walls of the cusp come too close. Instead, a sheet emanates from the cusp's tip, through which air is entrained. Our analytical theory of this instability is confirmed by experimental observation and quantitative comparison with numerical simulations of the flow equations

How do the properties of training scenarios influence the robustness of reservoir operating policies to climate uncertainty?

Reservoir control policies provide a flexible option to adapt to the uncertain hydrologic impacts of climate change. This challenge requires robust policies capable of navigating scenarios that are wetter, drier, or more variable than anticipated. While a number of prior studies have trained robust policies using large scenario ensembles, there remains a need to understand how the properties of training scenarios impact policy robustness. Specifically, this study investigates scenario properties including annual runoff, snowpack, and baseline regret - the difference between baseline policy and perfect foresight performance in an individual scenario. Results indicate that policies trained to scenario subsets with high baseline regret outperform those generated with other training sets in both wetter and drier futures, largely by adopting an intra-annual hedging strategy. The approach highlights the potential to improve the efficiency and robustness of policy training by considering both the hydrologic properties and baseline regret of the training ensemble

Theoretical studies of the historical development of the accounting discipline: a review and evidence

Many existing studies of the development of accounting thought have either been atheoretical or have adopted Kuhn's model of scientific growth. The limitations of this 35-year-old model are discussed. Four different general neo-Kuhnian models of scholarly knowledge development are reviewed and compared with reference to an analytical matrix. The models are found to be mutually consistent, with each focusing on a different aspect of development. A composite model is proposed. Based on a hand-crafted database, author co-citation analysis is used to map empirically the entire literature structure of the accounting discipline during two consecutive time periods, 1972–81 and 1982–90. The changing structure of the accounting literature is interpreted using the proposed composite model of scholarly knowledge development

Identifying robust adaptive irrigation operating policies to balance deeply uncertain economic food production and groundwater sustainability trade-offs

Increasing irrigation demand has heavily relied on groundwater use, especially in places with highly variable water supplies that are vulnerable to drought. Groundwater management in agriculture is becoming increasingly challenging given the growing effects from overdraft and groundwater depletion worldwide. However, multiple challenges emerge when seeking to develop sustainable groundwater management in irrigated systems, such as trade-offs between the economic revenues from food production and groundwater resources, as well as the broad array of uncertainties in food-water systems. In this study we explore the applicability of Evolutionary Multi-Objective Direct Policy Search (EMODPS) to identify adaptive irrigation policies that water agencies and farmers can implement including operational decisions related to land use and groundwater use controls as well as groundwater pumping fees. The EMODPS framework yields state-aware, adaptive policies that respond dynamically as system state conditions change, for example with variable surface water (e.g., shifting management strategies across wet versus dry years). For this study, we focus on the Semitropic Water Storage district located in the San Joaquin Valley, California to provide broader insights relevant to ongoing efforts to improve groundwater sustainability in the state. Our findings demonstrate that adaptive irrigation policies can achieve sufficiently flexible groundwater management to acceptably balance revenue and sustainability goals across a wide range of uncertain future scenarios. Among the evaluated policy decisions, pumping restrictions and reductions in inflexible irrigation demands from tree crops are actions that can support dry-year pumping while maximizing groundwater storage recovery during wet years. Policies suggest that an adaptive pumping fee is the most flexible decision to control groundwater pumping and land use

Two‐Way Option Contracts That Facilitate Adaptive Water Reallocation in the Western United States

Many water markets in the western United States (U.S.) have the ability to reallocate water temporarily during drought, often as short‐term water rights leases from lower value irrigated activities to higher value urban uses. Regulatory approval of water transfers, however, typically takes time and involves high transaction costs that arise from technical and legal analyses, discouraging short‐term leasing. This leads municipalities to protect against drought‐related shortfalls by purchasing large volumes of infrequently used permanent water rights. High transaction costs also result in municipal water rights rarely being leased back to irrigators in wet or normal years, reducing agricultural productivity. This research explores the development of a multi‐year two‐way option (TWO) contract that facilitates leasing from agricultural‐to‐urban users during drought and leasing from urban‐to agricultural users during wet periods. The modeling framework developed to assess performance of the TWO contracts includes consideration of the hydrologic, engineered, and institutional systems governing the South Platte River Basin in Colorado where there is growing competition for water between municipalities (e.g., the city of Boulder) and irrigators. The modeling framework is built around StateMod, a network‐based water allocation model used by state regulators to evaluate water rights allocations and potential rights transfers. Results suggest that the TWO contracts could allow municipalities to maintain supply reliability with significantly reduced rights holdings at lower cost, while increasing agricultural productivity in wet and normal years. Additionally, the TWO contracts provide irrigators with additional revenues via net payments of option fees from municipalities. Plain Language Summary The inability to quickly and inexpensively reallocate water during drought has pushed municipalities to purchase many more permanent water rights than needed to meet their demands in an average year. Leasing these rights back to agriculture during non‐drought years is similarly slow and expensive, so it is uncommon, thus reducing agricultural productivity. States in the Western U.S., including Colorado, have begun to pass laws to make short‐term water transfers less costly and time consuming, although few new transfer mechanisms have yet been developed to take advantage of these laws. This research describes a “two‐way option” that coordinates temporary transfers of water rights and corresponding payments between agricultural and urban users, with the direction and timing of transfer dependent on hydrologic conditions (defined by an index as wet or dry). The study uses a detailed water allocation model that considers hydrology, infrastructure, and institutional water rights in testing the effectiveness of these option contracts within the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District. Results suggest that the two‐way option can provide municipal users substantial cost savings while still maintaining high reliability during droughts, while agricultural users benefit from payments from urban users and higher levels of productivity in wet and normal years. Key Points Cities manage drought by buying permanent water rights well in excess of average demands as transaction costs deter short‐term leasing Two‐way options facilitate rapid transfers from agricultural‐to‐urban uses during drought and in the reverse direction during wet periods Urban users can maintain high reliability with reduced holdings of expensive permanent rights, while irrigators see gains during wet year

Wave instabilities in the presence of non vanishing background in nonlinear Schrodinger systems

We investigate wave collapse ruled by the generalized nonlinear Schroedinger (NLS) equation in 1+1 dimensions, for localized excitations with non-zero background, establishing through virial identities a new criterion for blow-up. When collapse is arrested, a semiclassical approach allows us to show that the system can favor the formation of dispersive shock waves. The general findings are illustrated with a model of interest to both classical and quantum physics (cubic-quintic NLS equation), demonstrating a radically novel scenario of instability, where solitons identify a marginal condition between blow-up and occurrence of shock waves, triggered by arbitrarily small mass perturbations of different sign