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Studies report different findings concerning the climate benefits of bioenergy, in part due to varying scope and use of different approaches to define spatial and temporal system boundaries. We quantify carbon balances for bioenergy systems that use biomass from forests managed with long rotations, employing different approaches and boundary conditions. Two approaches to represent landscapes and quantify their carbon balances - expanding vs. constant spatial boundaries - are compared. We show that for a conceptual forest landscape, constructed by combining a series of time-shifted forest stands, the two approaches sometimes yield different results. We argue that the approach that uses constant spatial boundaries is preferable because it captures all carbon flows in the landscape throughout the accounting period. The approach that uses expanding system boundaries fails to accurately describe the carbon fluxes in the landscape due to incomplete coverage of carbon flows and influence of the stand-level dynamics, which in turn arise from the way temporal system boundaries are defined on the stand level. Modelling of profit-driven forest management using location-specific forest data shows that the implications for carbon balance of management changes across the landscape ( which are partly neglected when expanding system boundaries are used) depend on many factors such as forest structure and forest owners' expectations of market development for bioenergy and other wood products. Assessments should not consider forest-based bioenergy in isolation but should ideally consider all forest products and how forest management planning as a whole is affected by bioenergy incentives - and how this in turn affects carbon balances in forest landscapes and forest product pools. Due to uncertainties, we modelled several alternative scenarios for forest products markets. We recommend that future work consider alternative scenarios for other critical factors, such as policy options and energy technology pathways.

This study sets out to analyse the factors that determine delays in the signing of audit reports. The delays are measured as a function of the number of days that elapse from the closure of the accounting period until the date when the audit report is signed. The study has been conducted in Spain, on 105 companies of the Spanish continuous market, from 2002 to 2005. The results obtained utilizing panel data methodology demonstrate that the two factors characterizing the companies that present less audit delay are: classification to sectors that are subject to regulatory pressure, such as the financial and energy sectors; and the size of company relative to its sector. Variables such as audit firm, qualifications or regulatory change show no significant relationship with audit delay in the Spanish context.

The traditional categorisation of expenditures evident in many firms' charts of accounts and financial statements does not identify and measure expenditures on intangible investment separately from tangible investment and operating expenditures. This contrasts with the accounting for tangible investment, which separately accounts for all expenditures as assets unless the future benefits are consumed in a single accounting period. Further, in searching for better ways to account for intangibles, regulators and researchers have focused on the accounting choice problem relating to the existence and recognisability of intangible assets. In this paper, we argue that identifying and separately reporting the expenditures on intangible investment is the logical first step in accounting for intangible investments. Learning about the firm's categories of value driving (and sometimes potentially value destroying) expenditures has important implications for understanding aspects of the value chain, performance measurement, valuation, corporate governance and the external audit. There are significant expenditures invested in intangibles including resources such as human capital, the long-term customer base, product and process related technologies, information technology, and brands and intellectual property.1 To date, the traditional categorisation of expenditures evident in many firms' charts of accounts and the financial statements does not identify and measure expenditures on these intangibles separately from expenditures on tangible investment and current production (operating expenditures).2 This contrasts with the accounting for tangible investment, which separately accounts for all expenditures not consumed in a single accounting period as assets. In searching for better ways to account for intangibles, regulators and researchers have focused on the accounting choice problem relating to the existence and recognisability of intangible assets.

This paper compares income inequality and income mobility in the Scandinavian countries and the United States during 1980–90. The results suggest that inequality is greater in the United States than in the Scandinavian countries and that this inequality ranking of countries remains unchanged when the accounting period of income is extended from one to eleven years. The pattern of mobility turns out to be remarkably similar, in the sense that the proportionate reduction in inequality from extending the accounting period of income is much the same. But we do find evidence of greater dispersion of first differences of relative earnings and income in the United States. Relative income changes are associated with changes in labor market and marital status in all four countries, but the magnitude of such changes are largest in the United States.

It is demonstrated that the discount rate for taxes in the traditional formula for the after-tax cost of debt is misspecified for the UK situation. Several new formulae are derived for the after-tax costs for specific periods, including the accounting period and the tax lag. Iterative solution methods are not required.

It is argued that for many purposes the measurement of inequality should be based on income measured over a longer period than a single year. However, samples of individual earnings over a long period are extremely rare, and there are no data on complete lifetime earnings. This survey examines the wide variety of attempts that have been made to estimate inequality using a longer accounting period Emphasis is placed on the problems of extending the accounting period, rather than the properties of particular statistical measures of inequality.

The 1968 amendment to Regulation D of the Federal Reserve Code permits banks to carry forward one sequential reserve excess or deficiency into the next reserve accounting period. This was intended to reduce the weekly pressure on individual banks to adjust their reserve position. We find, instead, that the carry-forward provision gives individual banks an incentive to alternate weekly between reserve excesses and reserve deficiencies. Thus, the carry-forward provision tends to induce reserve position adjustments even in the absence of changes in the level of deposits. In addition, the carry-forward provision reduces the impact of interest-rate changes on the desired level of excess reserves. SINCE THE 1968 AMENDMENT to Regulation D of the Federal Reserve Code, reserve requirements have been based on the level of deposits two weeks earlier1 and banks have been permitted to carry forward into the next accounting period (one week) a reserve excess or deficiency of not more than two percent of their required reserves. A bank may not, however, carry forward two consecutive reserve excesses nor two consecutive reserve deficiencies. This paper examines the effect of the carry-forward provision on individual bank reserve positions. Following Orr and Mellon [7] we approach reserve position management by an individual bank as an inventory problem. Our analysis shows that the carryforward provision gives individual banks an incentive to alternate weekly between deficient and excess reserve positions. This oscillatory behavior is observed in the available data. Our analysis also suggests that the carry-forward provision reduces the impact of interest-rate changes on the desired level of excess reserves and, generally, increases the pressure on individual banks to alter their reserve positions. The carry-forward provision has already received some attention in the literature. Coats [3] suggests that the potential to carry over reserves alters the meaning of free reserves, while Gilbert [5] argues that the reserve-adjustment pressure is the same with or without the carry-forward provision. The effect of

This paper considers a practical problem involving a multilevel system: color perception of individual human beings, man-machine interactions, and changing social factors. Previous research on individuals found a significant but noncritical decline in performance on a color name interference task from noon to 8 p.m. compared to other times of the day. The hypothesis now tested is whether critical diffences in color-matching efficiency for a group occur over a 24-hour period. Subjects were 13 color matchers and 30 printers who worked rotating shifts. Data were drawn from production records for 38 pairs of multicolor jobs performed over three four-week (accounting) periods. Data were analyzed via a cusp catastrophe model for two criteria: color matching time (R2 =.99) and printing paper wasted (R2 =.98). Job length was the bifurcation factor. Accounting period was the asymmetry factor, which was interpreted in terms of organizational dynamics that were taking place. Thecentral conclusion was that critical differences in color-matching efficiency could be observed over a 24-hour period when certain social or task factors are operating.