This introductory essay reviews recent advances in the emergent field of social studies of finance (SSF) and, subsequently, sets out to illustrate how a closer engagement with SSF might benefit research interests in accounting and vice versa. Finally, it provides a sketch of how mutual...

This paper analyses the use and circulation of nternational auditing standards within a large post-Soviet Russian audit firm, as it faces up to the challenges of international harmonisation. It describes this process as one of ‘connecting worlds’ and translation. In a detailed field study...

This paper studies the roles that images and ideas of market creation played in the re-articulation of relations between government, audit expertise and professional organisation in post-Soviet Russia. It examines the change from state-led inspection to market-oriented auditing between 1985 and...

Equilibrium credit rationing, in the sense of Stiglitz and Weiss (1981), implies the borrower faces an infinite marginal cost of funds. Infinitessimily delaying the project to accumulate more wealth is therefore advantageous to the borrower. As a result, the well-known conditions for credit...

(This article was first published in the Financial Times Mastering Risk series, 2000 under the title of 'Power and Influence in Risk Regulation'). Introduction The regulation of business and corporate risk management are inextricably related. Regulation is one way in which risks are managed in...

Equilibrium credit rationing in the sense of Stiglitz and Weiss (1981) implies the marginal cost of funds to the borrower is infinite. So borrowers have an overwhelming incentive to cut their loan by a dollar and thereby avoiding being rationed. Ways of doing this include scaling down the...

Most of us think it proper to study regulation but it is harder to say how regulation can be carried out properly. Regulators, indeed, seem to be on a hiding to nothing - they are routinely savaged in the press, they are seldom informed that they have got it right and hardly ever told what a...

This paper shows that if moral hazard leads to credit rationing, an appropriate usury law must raise social welfare. Under market clearing, a usury law is always beneficial if funds are inelastically supplied. When entrepreneurial heterogeneity is introduced, an improvement arises even when the...

Business risk management, taking a variety of forms, has been a growth point in corporate management in recent years. That change in emphasis is said to stem from responses to high-profile disasters like Bhopal and Exxon Valdez, increasing legal and regulatory pressure on risk management and a...