Search results

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 is to market a reinterpretation of Brazilian economic history highlighting the importance of non-tradable goods to understand major historical developments such as the lack of industrialization in the mining boom; the rise and contribution of industries to development in the early 20th century; indexation as hyperinflation in the late 20th century; growth and cycles in the early 21st century.

Section 2 introduces analytical perspectives on the relationship between non-tradables, transport costs and external shocks. Section 3 presents a historical overview of the gold and coffee cycles in the Brazilian economy, which highlights the crucial role played by transport costs in the genesis of industrialization. Thus, in a more precise way, industrialization was not an import substitution process but the substitution of non-tradables by the domestic tradable manufactures.

Section 4 shows that Brazilian statistical records and historiography disregard this characterization and, to that extent, underestimate economic growth in the primary export phase (1872–1920) and overestimate growth rates in the industrialization period (1920–1940). Section 5 shifts to the end of the 20th century to analyze the relationship between non-tradables, indexation and hyperinflation. Section 6 concludes with a brief discussion of the role played by the terms of trade and non-tradables in the unfolding of the 2014 economic crisis.

Distance from international markets and a continental geographic size made transport costs in Brazil historically prohibitive: the relevance of non-tradables in the Brazilian economic history. While the theme is not new, it seldom received proper attention in the historiography.

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.