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This study aims to provide insights into US and Australian analysts' views regarding the relative importance of disclosing the direct method (DM) or indirect method (IM) statement of cash flows and forecasting firm performance.

Evidence is collected from responses to 104 surveys and 52 interviews completed by US and Australian analysts from 2017 to 2022. The survey and interview questions are developed with reference to the literature.

US and Australian analysts believe that the DM format provides incremental benefits compared to the IM for (1) confirming the reliability of earnings; (2) improving earnings confidence; (3) more accurate ex ante forecasts of operating cash flow and earnings; and (4) identifying opportunistic accruals manipulation. Analysts view that DM disclosure can lower firm-level cost of equity, although US interviewees more uniformly expect lower costs of equity under DM disclosure when firms yield low earnings quality. DM disclosure is also more important during unstable economic periods, as proxied by COVID-19.

Limited research currently exists regarding disclosure of the DM or IM and its impact on analysts' forecasting accuracy, earnings quality, economic uncertainty and cost of equity. Previous research has relied on archival research to examine differences between the DM and IM methods and are limited by data availability. Our findings are particularly relevant to the US market with few US firms reporting the DM format.

A general global wave of public participation is occurring. Students and researchers as well as civil servants, policy-makers, and NGO representatives are encouraged to study, propose, and engage in public participation. New innovative forms of participation are suggested, and experiments in participation are ongoing locally and nationally. Within the transport sector, most studies of participation focus on road infrastructure and other land use changes. However, for other areas within transport, studies are limited and fragmented. Based on this, we see a need for a volume on public participation in transport, aimed at practitioners, students, and researchers, in what are unarguably times of change. The overall aim of the volume is to provide examples of different forms of public participation in transport, which can work as a setting for further analyses and discussions of public participation in transport. Drawing on different cases, eight empirical chapters are presented covering three main themes: grass-roots participation initiatives, participation in unconventional areas, and public participation that throws up unexpected results. In this introductory chapter, we set the scene for later discussions and analyses of public participation in transport. This chapter also provides an overview of the structure and content of the volume.

This chapter discusses conceptual links among Hazel Kyrk’s A Theory of Consumption (1923), the overall work of Thorstein Veblen, and Wesley C. Mitchell’s essays on spending and money. The three authors are concerned with transformations in production, related changes in the organization of consumption, and the effects on people. The approach is based on reading of Kyrk’s book in light of an integrated view of Veblen’s overall work. This chapter explains how Mitchell’s essays on money and spending built on Veblen’s work and discusses their relevance for understanding Kyrk’s book as conceptually linked to institutional economics. This chapter delineates the following commonalities: conception of living humans and money as an institution; distinction between business and industrial concerns; connection between distribution, waste, and consumption; and Veblen’s “machine process” of standardization in production and its relation to consumption. This chapter brings more detail in the conceptual and theoretical discussion of Veblen’s influence on Kyrk’s book.