Niccolò Comerio

Lease accounting has often been criticized for being too reliant on bright lines and subjective judgments, as lessees were not required to disclose assets and liabilities arising from operating leases directly on the balance sheet, thereby improving the appearance of the financial condition to investors. To remedy this, in January and February 2016 the IASB and the FASB issued the new accounting standard IFRS 16 and ASC 842, starting a new era of lease accounting and ending the guesswork previously required when calculating companies' lease obligations. This paper investigates the impact on investors' risk perception level of EU and US airline companies, following the enactment of these accounting standards. Results confirm the importance of disclosing all the relevant information about leases directly within the financial statements and not in footnotes, as this increases transparency and comparability between financial statements, protecting all investors, ranging from the rational ones to the more credulous.

Although the level of extreme poverty has declined in recent decades, income inequality in many countries is at historic levels, thus representing a concern. Theoretically, tourism can play a crucial role in the fight against poverty and economic inequalities, but the limited existing literature has failed to reach a general consensus about this topic. By focusing on Italy, this paper investigates the extent of the role played by tourism in pursuing a reduction in income inequalities, while also observing effects on economic growth. In fact inequalities have also been increasing in Italy, but little is known about the role that tourism has played in this process. The main findings reveal that tourism is able to reverse the actual trend of increase in dispersion in terms of per capita income which characterized the Italian provinces from 2010 to 2019. This industry can therefore be effectively used as a tool to promote both the catching up of poorer provinces with richer ones, thus narrowing the income gap, and the reduction of overall income disparities among different provinces, leading to a more uniform distribution of wealth.

Although the overall extent of extreme global poverty has decreased in recent years, the level of income disparity remains historically high in several nations, continuing to raise concerns. From a theoretical perspective, the tourism sector has the potential to significantly contribute to the fight against poverty and income disparities. However, the current limited body of empirical literature has so far failed to reach a unanimous agreement regarding this potential opportunity. The aim of this article is to review existing studies which address the nexus between tourism expansion and income inequality, and to indentify future research trajectories.

Benefits of rapid tourism development are widely welcomed by governments of many destinations, with a growing body of literature confirming the existence of a connection between tourism and economic growth in several countries across the world. However, even if sub-national studies are deemed relevant, they are still scarce: we fill this gap by verifying if and how the tourism-led and economic-led growth hypotheses affect Italian provinces. Main findings reveal that in about one fifth of Italian provinces the two hypotheses hold, with a decreasing marginal contribution of the tourism to the economic growth once it reaches a certain threshold. Therefore, it is possible to use tourism to support economies, even if discrepancies are foreseeable among territories.

Purpose: Over the past decade, researchers have witnessed an exponential growth in the number of publications on IR. This paper aims to understand the state of the art of the research field and to highlight the areas where further academic research is needed, guiding developments in theory, research, policy and practices. Design/methodology/approach: The authors apply the dynamic literature review method called “Systematic Literature Network Analysis”, which combines systematic literature review and bibliographic network analysis. Furthermore, to overcome some of the limitations connected to the methodology, the authors integrate the literature with a manual content analysis of papers. Findings: IR adoption and practices and their determinants represent the most analyzed aspects of literature. Over time, attention has been paid to more specific issues, such as the relationship between IR and other disclosure mechanisms, IR quality and its assurance, the critical analysis of the IR framework and principles and difficulties in IR adoption. Although the literature on IR can be considered to be in its mature stage, many aspects are still under-researched, so there is plenty of space for future research. Originality/value: The authors propose the following main issues as subjects to be investigated in future studies: IR is not simply an evolution of sustainability reporting, but an innovative communication tool; the debate on who the recipients of value are (shareholders or stakeholders) and on what the definition of value adopted by IR is still remains an open issue; more attention should be given to the role of IR as a managerial tool, which could support strategy formation and communication, and influence internal processes of performance measurement and evaluation; what the future of IR will be in light of recent EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and new ISSB's standards is still an open question. From a methodological perspective, little is known about structured approaches in accounting studies. The authors confirm how methodologies, such as that of this paper, may be exploited as a tool to support dynamic analysis for setting the agendas for future studies in the accounting field.