John Evans contends that the regulatory relationship that has evoh'ed between the SEC and tie accounting profession has resulted in satisfactory accounting standards by enabling the goternment to utilze the expertise within the accounting profession at linted expense to the governnent. He supports the Conussion's position that the accounting profession should be given the opportiunit to self -r...

Michael Barrett. Jr. discusses whether private accounting standards have implemented the disclosure mandates of the Securities Acts. He outlines the issues in the SEC's delegation of public authority to the accounting profession as a prelude to the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations' constderatt of accounting disclosure standards. Barrett notes that the most important aspect of ...

Institutional efforts in the U.S. to develop a conceptual framework for business enterprises can be traced to the Paton and Littleton monograph in 1940 and later to the two Accounting Research Studies by Moonitz and Sprouse in 1962-1963. A committee of the American Accounting Association issued an influential report in which it advocated a “decision usefulness” approach in 1966, which was carri...

Design of contracts that define firm, and their accounting systems depend on the conditions in the firm’s factor and product markets. We examine the fundamental difficulty of defining and developing "uniform" accounting for diverse economic environments across countries and compare the differences in conditions prevailing in some key markets in Japan and the United States. There are important d...

This paper presents a prototype system to support the temporal reconstruction of financial accounting standards (FASs). The FASs have been subject to rapid expansion, increased complexity and frequent changes (amendments), which in combination make it difficult to determine the accurate rendering of FASs at specific points in time. The prototype allows a user to specify an FAS (e.g., SFAS 35) a...

office residual expenses, the company uses a base as provided in 9904.403. For the purpose of allocating the home office IR&D and B&P costs, the company removes the data of Segment X from the base used for the allocation of its residual expenses. This practice meets the requirements of 9904.420–50(e)(2). (g) Company G has 10 segments. Segment X performs IR&D projects, the results of which benef...

The study aims to reveal that a valid and effective standard, which formerly issued, may reflect the needs and expectation of few interested powerful bodies due to the neutral comments and dearth of lobbyists in the process of setting the standard. The research investigates the working of the IASB, by exploring the standard setting process specifically in relation to the standard on busines...

We examine capital structure changes to investigate the impact of SFAS No. 13 on lessees. While this accounting standard essentially rearranged capital lease disclosures (from footnotes to the balance sheet), mandated capitalization substantially altered key accounting ratios. Our results document a systematic substitution from capital leases to operating leases and nonlease sources of financin...

This paper outlines the arguments for a common set of accounting standards and the forces that have promoted adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Widespread use of IFRS since 2005 provides an opportunity for empirical investigation of the benefits of IFRS. I summarise results of studies that are relevant for assessing the role of IFRS in both developing and developed ...