From the early decades of the twentieth century, a dominant characteristic of the modern “capitalist” corporation, especially in the United States, was the separation of asset ownership in the form of publicly traded shares from allocative control over the corporation's resources by salaried...

The way corporations are accounted for is tremendously important for shaping the way investors and other stakeholders see and assess them. A new understanding of the purpose of financial accounting with adjoining accounting methods thus creates powerful incentives for corporate managers to...