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This paper aims to investigate student experiences and the potential impact of experience-based learning (EBL) in the early phase of graduate sustainability programs through the lens of key competencies. The goal is to provide evidence for the improvement of existing and the thorough design of new EBL formats in sustainability programs.

This comparative case study focuses on the first semester of three graduate sustainability programs at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany and Arizona State University, USA, for two of which EBL was a core feature. The study compares the curricula, the teaching and learning environments and the reported experiences of one student cohort from each of three programs and synthesizes the resulting insights. Student interviews were combined with student self-assessments and supported by in-vivo observations, curriculum designer input, instructor interviews and course materials. MAXQDA was used for data analysis following a grounded theory approach.

EBL influences students’ reflective capacity, which impacts the development of key competencies in sustainability. Qualitative analysis found four key themes in relation to the students’ learning in EBL settings, namely, discomfort, time-attention relationship, student expectations of instructors and exchange. The intersection of these themes with curricular structure, student dispositions and differing instructor approaches shows how curriculum can either support or interrupt the reflective cycle and thus, holistic learning.

With the focus on the first semester only, the students’ competence development over the course of the entire program cannot be demonstrated. Learning processes within EBL settings are complex and include aspects outside the control of instructors and curriculum designers. This study addresses only a select number of factors influencing students’ learning in EBL settings.

Early engagement with EBL activities can push students to leave their comfort zones and question previous assumptions. Designing curricula to include EBL while encouraging strong intra-cohort connections and creating space for reflection seems to be an effective approach to enable the development of key competencies in sustainability.

This paper investigates the experiences of students in EBL through a key competence lens. The study combines student self-perceptions, instructor reflections and in-vivo observations. Data collection and analysis were conducted by a researcher not affiliated with the programs. These factors make for a unique study design and with data-driven insights on the seldom researched competence-pedagogy-curriculum connection.

This research aims to investigate the role of project-based-learning within graduate sustainability curricula through the lens of key competence development. Project-based learning has become a widely recommended pedagogy for sustainability education. It is hypothesized that through collaboration, student autonomy and real-world application, students develop key competencies for sustainability. This paper also aims to examine the connection between project-based learning and competence development on a program level from the student perspective.

This two-year comparative case study follows the project-based-learning journeys of nine graduate sustainability students from three programs: the Master’s of Sustainability at Arizona State University, the Master’s of Sustainability Science at Leuphana University of Lüneburg and the Global Sustainability Science Master’s, an ASU and Leuphana collaboration. Over four semesters, the students each took part in four competence-oriented self-assessments and interviews to map their perceived learning throughout their programs. Additional contextual information was gathered from program and course materials and descriptions, instructor interviews and in vivo observations.

The defining aspects of project-based learning including collaboration, student autonomy and real-world connection do contribute to students’ self-perceived competence development. Student-driven and program-driven project-based learning experiences equally foster this result, as long as the pedagogical challenges of balancing support and student independence associated with each are mitigated through instructor actions, program design or individual student coping skills.

The results of this research can support higher education institutions in designing sustainability programs aimed at competence development through project-based learning. The focus on the curricular and program level combined with repeated overtime student-reported attribution to specific courses and activities bridges the gap between individual course case studies and theoretical recommendations for curriculum design. In addition to length and depth, this study also forefronts student experience of curricula as delivered.

This paper examines the impact of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 9 on earnings management (EM) using data from 2011 to 2019 of 100 commercial banks in Europe.

Using data from 2011 to 2019 of 100 commercial banks in Europe, the authors conducted several empirical investigations to test the mediating role of IFRS 9 on earnings manipulation through loan loss provision (LLP) by banks.

The result shows that the new accounting standards (IFRS 9) significantly affect the way banks report LLP. This paper provides evidence that non-listed banks in the EU engage in EM through LLP following IFRS 9 but experience less volatility of net income following the adoption. The findings indicate that such behaviour by banks cannot be suppressed by level of audit quality; suggesting that an improvement in accounting standards might not always guarantee accounting quality.

This finding has some policy implications; and regulators will need to identify additional tools to regulate or supervise EM behaviour.

This paper provides evidence on the impact of regulatory environment on financial reporting quality of transitional economies. This study compares the financial reporting quality of Hong Kong firms which are cross-listed in mainland China with those of Hong Kong firms cross-listed in China using specific earnings management metrics (earnings smoothing, timely loss recognition, value relevance and managing towards earnings targets) under pre- and post-IFRS regimes.

The financial reporting quality of Chinese A-share companies and Hong Kong listed companies are examined using earnings management measures. Using 2007 as base year, the study used a cumulative of −5 and +5 years of convergence experience which provide a total of 3,000 firm-year observations. In addition to regression analyses, we used the difference-in-difference analysis to check for the impact of regulatory environments on earnings management.

Through the lens of contingency theory, our results indicate that the adoption of the new substantially IFRS-convergent accounting standards in China results in better financial reporting quality evidenced by less earning management. The empirical results further shows that accounting data are more value relevant for Hong Kong listed firms, and that firms listed in China are more likely to engage in accrual-based earnings management than in real earnings management activities. We established that different earnings management practices that are seemingly tolerable in one country may not be tolerable in another due to level of differences in the regulatory environments.

The findings show that Hong Kong listed companies’ exhibit higher level of financial reporting quality than Chinese listed companies, which implies that the financial reporting quality under IFRS can be significantly different in regions with different institutional, economic and regulatory environments. The results imply that contingent factors such as country’s institutional structures, its extent of regulation and the strength of its investor protection environments impact on financial reporting quality particularly in transitional and emerging economies. As such, these factors need to be given appropriate considerations by financial reporting regulators and policy-makers interested in controlling earnings management practices among their corporations.

This study is a high impact study considering that China plays a significant role in today’s globalised economy. This study is unique as it the first, that we are aware of, to compare real earnings activities against accrual-based earnings management in pre- and post-IFRS adoption periods within the Chinese and Hong Kong financial reporting environments, distinguishing between cross-listed and non-cross-listed firms.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of financial penalties on the stability of the banking sector.

A unique database of 671 financial penalties imposed on 68 international listed banks between 2007 and 2014 and a fixed-effects panel data approach were used.

The results show that financial penalties increase banks’ systemic risk exposure but do not significantly affect banks’ contribution to systemic risk. Additionally, the link between financial penalties and systemic risk exposure is weaker in regulatory and supervisory systems with more prompt corrective power among national authorities. By contrast, supervisory authorities’ stronger power to declare insolvency and a greater external monitoring culture exacerbate the positive effects of financial penalties on systemic risk exposure.

The punishment of misconduct should correct the social harm and prevent future misconduct while ensuring the banking system’s stability. Therefore, authorities should punish misconduct by implementing penalties against the financial institutions at a specific amount that offsets the damages of misconduct but does not threaten systemic stability. Penalties against institutions may be complemented by financial penalties against upper management to induce a more responsible culture in banks.

This paper is the first to study the effect of financial penalties on the stability of the financial system. The results contribute to the ongoing debate on the appropriateness of financial penalties and address the question of whether bank regulators reduce or contribute to banks’ systemic risk.

This research aims to analyze to what extent sustainability and its related core aspects are integrated in media and communication's curricula of higher education institutions in Europe.

A total of n = 1068 bachelor and master’s degree programs, as well as their related curricula/program specifications, from 28 European countries were analyzed by means of content analysis.

Results show that the level of curricular integration of sustainability aspects in the field of media and communication is low (14%) to very low (6%) on module level. In most cases, sustainability remains an abstract guiding principle that is not translated into a dedicated course offer. This can indicate the difficulty of operationalizing such a concept as sustainability, which is experienced by not only higher education institutions but also policy and society as a whole. In addition, the results leave space for a reflection on the social and educational responsibility of higher education institutions.

The authors are aware that not all teaching (content) is depicted in curricula. Especially where teaching is research-based, The authors assume that sustainability (communication) is more present as the curricula' analysis can represent it. In addition, the fact of solely investigating English language curricula can be seen as a further limitation.

This research is one of the few attempts to verify the actual integration level of sustainability aspects in the curricula of a specific sustainability-relevant discipline, which is neither conducted as a case study nor as a single-country analysis.

Universities are expected to operate with high efficiency, with ever-growing expectations from a rising number of stakeholders in society. From a theoretical perspective economic science does provide frameworks and methods in order to tackle this, with the cornerstone of defining efficiency as a simple relation of a quantity of inputs toward a quantity of outputs. For the practice of university management and policy this does not answer the crucial questions of which inputs and which outputs to measure, and how to ensure the quality aspect of such management approaches. Higher education research can contribute to answering these questions. This chapter outlines a sector-specific framework for efficiency analysis and management, including suggestions regarding how to implement efficiency-improving measures in university settings.

Misconduct allegations have been found to not only affect the alleged firm but also other, unalleged firms in form of reputational and financial spillover effects. It has remained unexplored, however, how the number of prior allegations against other firms matters for an individual firm currently facing an allegation. Building on behavioral decision theory, we argue that the relationship between allegation prevalence among other firms and investor reaction to a focal allegation is inverted U-shaped. The inverted U-shaped effect is theorized to emerge from the combination of two effects: In the absence of prior allegations against other firms, investors fail to anticipate the focal allegation, and hence react particularly negatively (“anticipation effect”). In the case of many prior allegations against other firms, investors also react particularly negatively because investors perceive the focal allegation as more warranted (“evaluation effect”). The multi-industry, empirical analysis of 8,802 misconduct allegations against US firms between 2007 and 2017 provides support for our predicted, inverted U-shaped effect. Our study complements recent misconduct research on spillover effects by highlighting that not only a current allegation against an individual firm can “contaminate” other, unalleged firms but that also prior allegations against other firms can “contaminate” investor reaction to a focal allegation against an individual firm.

This study analyses the effect of fuel efficiency increase on travel demand in the city of Berlin. Vehicle technologies such as advanced driver assistance systems can help drivers to save fuel and thus lower exhaust emissions on a network level. In order to obtain high political endorsement among different stakeholders, the analysis of such effects which have an impact on overall fuel and emission savings are highly relevant. Recent testing of so called advanced driver assistance systems showed their ability to reduce fuel consumption and lower traffic emissions by giving driving recommendations to drivers.

Two effects on driving were simulated using a travel demand model: the increase in fuel prices which will take place in the coming years and a possible increase in vehicle fuel efficiency. Comparing these scenarios allowed us to calculate the effect of price change and the rebound effect of fuel efficiency gains using standard methods for transport elasticities. The simulation was run with the travel demand model TAPAS and the city of Berlin was the network used as a case study.

As fuel prices increase over time, driving tends to decrease. Driving increases, however, if vehicles become more fuel efficient and the result is the observed rebound effect. On a city network level, this also translates to lower emission savings than expected from the vehicle fuel efficiency gains. The rebound effect which we estimated matches similar findings in the literature, specifically in terms of their magnitude.

We used a simulation to compare scenarios of city travel demand. The result allowed us to estimate changes to the desired variables of fuel efficiency and fuel prices. For those interested in the effects of vehicle efficiency gains on city level these results are highly recommended for consideration.

The proposed framework for analysing rebound effects helped to assess the impacts of energy efficiency technologies on a city level.