Richard Kolodny, Peter Seeley, Murray E. Polakoff, The Effect of Compensating Balance Requirements on the Profitability of Borrowers and Lenders, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 12, No. 5 (Dec., 1977), pp. 801-815

This paper adds to the literature on the role of financial economics in accounting standard-setting by analyzing the co-performation of an economic theory – the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) – in the construction of a new approach to accounting for credit losses in financial reporting. Inspired by actor-network theory and its notions of performativity and translation, the paper draws on interview data and documents to reconstruct the process by which the devalued “incurred loss” impairment model was replaced with a more forward-looking “expected loss” approach under IFRS in response to the 2008 financial crisis. These actions comprised of a series of experiments and negotiations, including an unsuccessful effort to establish an “ideal”-type model and the failure of a joint initiative between the IASB and the FASB. Alongside extensive considerations over how to make the approach operational, the influence of the EMH regarding the relationship between loan pricing and initial expectations of credit losses is elucidated. We show how a standard-setting objective grounded in financial economics is translated through a process of approximation as it forges linkages with other matters of concern. This process sheds light on the transformations involved in finding tolerable solutions when utilizing financial economics in the setting of accounting standards.

We investigate the impact of passenger shipping cartels on trans-Atlantic migration during the early twentieth century. We assemble from primary sources a detailed database of passenger flows and cartel operations and show that cartel operation reduced migratory flows by approximately 20% to 25%. Further, we show that there was no strong intertemporal substitution in migration to North America (at least in the short run) and, therefore, that the effects of cartel operation were not “undone” by later migration. Lastly, we find that cartel operation had no appreciable effect on the variability of migration flows, providing evidence against the notion that unfettered competition was destabilizing to turn-of-the-century transportation markets.