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This paper's purpose is to show how literary texts can be used as a source for gaining insights into social practices, including accounting. It aims to deepen our understanding of such social practices in their cultural, social, economic and political contexts by examining portrayals of business and accounting transactions and of reflections of social and economic concerns in two German novels set during a time of economic and political crisis, namely the Weimar Republic's hyperinflation period.

The paper analyses, against the historical, social and economic backgrounds of the inflation period, the novels' authors' social and political perspectives as reflected in the novels; the literary devices employed; the way in which the description of business and accounting matters aids our understanding of everyday inflation period transactions and underlying economic and social concerns; and the links made between accounting/business, money and inflation on the one hand, and morality and rationality on the other hand.

The paper finds that in this exceptional economic situation, the relationship between accounting and morality as explored by Maltby is reversed. The portrayal of (often unusual and creative) economic transactions is used to illustrate the lack of economic, legal and moral certainty experienced by individuals and to evoke and critique the damage caused by the hyperinflation on German society and on human relationships, including the commoditisation of all aspects of life and the resulting moral decline.

The paper contributes to the literature exploring the role of representations of business/accounting and finance in narrative fiction. The novels examined here provide an alternative means for observing, interpreting and critiquing social phenomena, specifically in a setting where financial considerations dominate human interaction and social relationships.

This case will lead students to a discussion of the causes and effects of hyperinflation. The link with fiscal deficits is explored, and so is the link with societal changes. The particular focus is on the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe whose government implemented a controversial land redistribution program. The case can be taught with a class experiment—see teaching note.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze empirically if financial crises have decreased potential output for a selected group of economies.

The authors estimate different country-specific stylized Phillips curves to verify if inflationary pressures were stronger on the recovery periods after financial crises, relative to the recovery periods after recessions.

The results, in general, do not show any clear empirical evidence that financial crises erode potential output. Moreover, there are no apparent differences in terms of the effects of financial crises over potential output between emerging and industrial economies.

This paper sheds light on the widely debated issue of whether financial crises constitute adverse supply shocks that lead to impairment in an economy’s productive potential. In interpreting the results, the authors must first recognize that all of them are based on the reduced-form relationships. Thus, they are about correlations and not necessarily about true structural relationships.

The study is very important for policy makers and specially Central Banks worldwide.

The loss of potential output is a very serious economic and social phenomenon. This paper sheds light on the debate if financial crisis lead to losses of potential output.

The paper is original in using more Phillips curves and because it studies also the behavior of emerging economies.

After some introductory words about the preeminence of German accounting research during the first half of the 20th century, the paper offers a survey of the most important theories of accounts classes that still prevailed during the first two decades or longer. Following World War I, the issue of hyperinflation in Austria and Germany stimulated a considerable amount of original accounting research. After the inflationary period, a series of competing Bilanztheorien, discussed in the text, dominated the scene. Two figures emerged supremely from this struggle. The first was Eugen Schmalenbach, with his “dynamic accounting”, a series of further important contributions to inflation accounting, to the master chart of accounts, to cost accounting, and to other areas of business economics. The other scholar was Fritz Schmidt, with his organic accounting theory that promoted replacement values and his emphasis on the profit and loss account, no less than the balance sheet. The gamut of further eminent personalities, listed in chronological order, contains the following names: Schär, Penndorf, Leitner, Gomberg, Nicklisch, Rieger, Prion, Osbahr, Passow, Dörfel, Sganzini, Walb, Calmes, Kalveram, Meithner, Lion, Töndury, Mahlberg, le Coutre, Geldmacher, Max Lehmann, Leopold Mayer, Karl Seidel, Alfred Isaac, Mellerowicz, Seyffert, Beste, Gutenberg, Käfer, Seischab, Kosiol, Münstermann, and others. Separate Sections or Sub‐Sections are devoted to charts and master charts of accounts in German accounting theory, as well as to cost accounting and the writing of accounting history.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between tax evasion, political/public corruption and increased taxation in Zimbabwe’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The study as a descriptive survey used questionnaires and interviews as research instruments for collecting data.

The findings revealed that most SMEs are no longer paying some form of taxes as expected since the Government of Zimbabwe through the Ministry of Finance and Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe introduced the 2% tax levy on all bank electronic transactions greater than US$10 from October 2018.

The paper recommends that the government should create an independent anti-corruption committee with strong monitoring and regulatory mechanism so as to fight political/public corruption; hence, creating a paradigm of trust and confidence among different economic players. Lastly, the tax authorities should engage all the key economic players when crafting the country’s tax laws/rates so as to promote a sense of equity, equality and economic transparency among citizens.

This paper aims to find, which of the assets: gold, oil or bitcoin can be considered a safe-haven for investors in a crisis-driven Venezuela. The authors look also at the governmental change of approach towards the use and mining of cryptocurrencies being one of the assets and potential applications of bitcoin as (quasi) money.

The authors collected the daily data (a period from 01 May 2014 to 31 July 2018) on the development of the following magnitudes: Caracas Stock Exchange main index: Índice Bursátil de Capitalisación (IBC) index; gold price in US dollars, the oil price in US dollars and Bitcoin price in bolivar fuerte (VEF) (LocalBitcoins). The authors estimated a threshold VAR model between IBC and each of the possible safe-haven assets, where the trigger variable was the IBC; then the authors modelled the residuals from the TVAR model using MGARCH model with dynamic conditional correlation.

The results show that that gold is a better safe-haven than oil for Venezuelan investors, while bitcoin can be considered a weak safe haven. Still, bitcoin can perform (to a certain extent) money functions in a crisis-driven country.

Further research after the change of local currency from VEF into bolivar soberano might be looked at on the later stage.

The authors provide evidence on which of analysed asset is the best safe-haven for the investors acting in the time of the crisis. The evidence goes in line with other authors’ findings, thus, the results might bring implications for investors of more universal character. Additionally, the result might be helpful for governments and/or monetary authorities while projecting institutional frameworks and conducting monetary policy.

The unprecedented economic crisis in Venezuela was one of the factors that fuelled the mining and use of cryptocurrencies in the daily life of its citizens. Nowadays, the country is a leader in terms of the use of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in Latin America. The results show a potential application of bitcoin as a store of value or even means of payments in Venezuelan (or in other countries affected by the crisis).

The paper builds on the original data set collected by the authors and brings evidence from the models the authors constructed to verify, which asset is the best option for investors in hard times of the crisis. The authors add to the existing literature on financial assets, cryptocurrencies and behaviour of investors under different economic conditions.