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This paper presents a compilation of personal reflections from 66 contributors on the impact of, and responses to, COVID-19 in accounting education in 45 different countries around the world. It reveals a commonality of issues, and a variability in responses, many positive outcomes, including the creation of opportunities to realign learning and teaching strategies away from the comfort of traditional formats, but many more that are negative, primarily relating to the impact on faculty and student health and well-being, and the accompanying stress. It identifies issues that need to be addressed in the recovery and redesign stages of the management of this crisis, and it sets a new research agenda for studies in accounting education.

The rise of Brazil, Russia, India, and China will shape global resource use, the location of market demand and international institutions and interdependencies in the decade to come. In this paper we argue that an understanding of the historical and institutional context of the BRICs, and the potential shift towards a multi-polar world is important for developing curricula and content in international business courses in the future. Implications for international business theory and teaching are discussed. (Contains 4 tables.)

As documented in this special issue, all over the world hard choices must be made in education, government, business, and medicine. Intelligence tests, used intelligently and with appropriate ethical safeguards, are one tool of many that help make hard choices work out well, or at least better than the next-best alternative (Kaufman, Raiford, & Coalson, 2016). The reliability of intelligence tests is far from perfect. Complaining about IQ tests is the privilege of those who have them. It is probably no accident that intelligence tests were invented in France, not long after a series of reforms from 1881 to 1901 made education free and compulsory for all children (Harrigan, 2001). It is likewise probably not an accident that intelligence testing was then adopted most enthusiastically in the world's wealthiest countries in the midst of similar attempts to raise educational standards. Among the countries featured in this special issue, Greece, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States achieved near-universal education decades ago; Brazil, India, Mexico, Oman, and Peru have done so only within the last 15 years. Once a government takes on the responsibility of educating all of its citizens and then successfully achieves near-universal school attendance, it is confronted with the magnitude of population-wide individual differences in academic aptitude. The most pressing concern has to do with vulnerable children with intellectual disabilities. It is true that every child can learn, but not every child learns best in regular education. In this commentary, the author addresses the relation between universal education and the need for intelligence testing. The article goes on to compare U.S. developments in intelligence testing with those in Oman, Greece, India, Japan, Brazil, Peru, and the Netherlands. It concludes with three themes that emerged among the articles in this issue.

Many arguments in favour of school voucher programs are based upon libertarian free agency principles. Viewed at the organizational level, allowing persons to exercise choice in education would seem to offer incentives for all educational organizations within that framework to improve overall product quality and thus more effectively obtain the education good for both individual and society. However, analysis from the transcending institutional level shows that "supra"-organizational forces will progressively reduce choice and quality as both private and public organizations relinquish their distinctive curricula and philosophies as a "de facto" requirement for participation within the broader educational institution or "market". Acknowledging the costs of, and designing policy to maintain, particular information are both essential to effectively producing the education good within a competitive institutional structure. (Contains 1 note.)

This group of articles discusses a variety of studies related to social security and retirement benefits. These studies are related to both developing and developed nations and are also concerned with studying work conditions and government role in administering a democratic social security system. (SSH)

This series of articles presents a variety of studies related to employment opportunities for the disabled, stimulating economy and employment, and new job creation. These studies are related to both developed and developing countries and are also concerned with the international division of labor. (SSH)

This series of articles cites a variety of sources and synthesizes a number of studies on the working conditions and the welfare of workers from several countries. (SSH)