This study explores a large and detailed dataset of financial statements of Belgian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over the 1997–2010 period. Using accruals quality as a proxy for the quality of SMEs’ financial reports, we find that the quality of SMEs’ financial statements is negatively related to those companies’ effective interest cost. This result is also highly economically significant. The findings in this paper are consistent with the idea that earnings are important for creditors in predicting SMEs’ reimbursement capacity (i.e., future cash flows) and that less estimation error in accruals enhances earnings’ ability to predict future cash flows. We deliver evidence of an important economic benefit of financial reporting for SMEs, to wit, the potential to reduce information asymmetry between SMEs and their creditors through higher-quality financial reporting

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Daily Urban Systems (DUSs) are not only an attractive concept for planning locations for jobs, housing, schools and retail, but also for managing services such as public transportation and health care. If we can match geographically demand and supply of goods and services, higher levels of spatial efficiency can be reached. Since 50 years most of the research delineating DUSs uses thresholds of commuting levels, thus identifying labor markets polarized towards central cities. Few research grasps the more recent complex interactions within metropolitan areas due to growth and decentralization of activities. In this paper, we use techniques of complex network theory, namely community detection, on nearly 4,500,000 Belgian commuting links to define DUSs. Secondly, we explore differences for DUSs by gender and by income group. The results confirm the usefulness of community detection techniques for delineating Daily Urban Systems. Commuting patterns of females and low and very low income commuters are geographically more restricted than those of male and high and very high income commuters.

The hydro-geomorphology of mountain catchments is mainly determined by vegetation cover. This study was carried out to analyse the impact of vegetation cover dynamics on flooding and water balance in 11 steep (0.27-0.65 m m -1 ) catchments of the western Rift Valley escarpment of Northern Ethiopia, an area that experienced severe deforestation and degradation until the first half of the 1980s and considerable reforestation thereafter. Land cover change analysis was carried out using aerial photos (1936,1965 and 1986) and Google Earth imaging (2005 and 2014). Peak discharge heights of 332 events and the median diameter of the 10 coarsest bedload particles (Max 10 ) moved in each event in three rainy seasons (2012-2014) were monitored. The result indicates a strong reduction in flooding (R 2 = 0.85, P<0.01) and bedload sediment supply (R 2 = 0.58, P<0.05) with increasing vegetation cover. Overall, this study demonstrates that in reforesting steep tropical mountain catchments, magnitude of flooding, water balance and bedload movement is strongly determined by vegetation cover dynamics.

The hydro-geomorphology of mountain catchments is mainly determined by vegetation cover. This study was carried out to analyse the impact of vegetation cover dynamics on flooding and water balance in 11 steep (0.27-0.65 mm-1) catchments of the western Rift Valley escarpment of Northern Ethiopia, an area that experienced severe deforestation and degradation until the first half of the 1980s and considerable reforestation thereafter. Land cover change analysis was carried out using aerial photos (1936,1965 and 1986) and Google Earth imaging (2005 and 2014). Peak discharge heights of 332 events and the median diameter of the 10 coarsest bedload particles (Max10) moved in each event in three rainy seasons (2012-2014) were monitored. The result indicates a strong reduction in flooding (R2 = 0.85, P<0.01) and bedload sediment supply (R2 = 0.58, P<0.05) with increasing vegetation cover. Overall, this study demonstrates that in reforesting steep tropical mountain catchments, magnitude of flooding, water balance and bedload movement is strongly determined by vegetation cover dynamics.