The links among better financial reporting, better markets, and better economy and society are arguable, but they remain poorly understood. The addition of IFRS to the set of available alternatives may improve these linkages, but granting them monopoly status does not. Claims that the universal...

In seeking to replace accounting conventions by concepts in the pursuit of principles-based standards, the FASB/IASB joint project on the conceptual framework has grounded its approach on a well-known definition of income by Hicks. We welcome the use of theories by accounting standard setters...

It is often claimed that statistical studies of covariation between financial and stock market data can help set better financial reporting policy. Such covariation, even when it can be estimated, tells us little about which financial reports help make better financial decisions. A case in...

Standard setters have sought a conceptual framework to guide development of a consistent set of accounting standards. However, the framework has two key weaknesses. First, it is very broad, lacks a measurement framework, and can be used ex post to justify a wide range of actual accounting...

In the neoclassical model of the firm, value surplus of the firm is assumed to accrue to its owner. Contract model suggests a distribution of the surplus among various agents depending on the imperfections of the markets in which they transact with the firm. If the share of the surplus to an...

Financial reporting environment of the world is dominated today by a top down push for uniform financial reporting standards. The advantages of uniformity and monopoly standards have been well-publicized compared to their disadvantages. No language, accounting included, can flourish under the...

Joel S. Demski's work is characterized by the austere discipline of applying the economizing principle to accounting and management phenomena. In natural sciences optimization is used as a structural principle for understanding the organization of the physical universe. As social scientists...

Financial reporting environment of the world is dominated today by a top down push for uniform financial reporting standards. The advantages of uniformity and monopoly standards have been well-publicized compared to their disadvantages. No language, accounting included, can flourish under the...

Accounting practices differ across geographic and political boundaries, across sectors of the economy within these boundaries, and across types of organizations. Globalization exerts a homegenizing force across the political and jurisdictional boundaries with mixed consequences. The development...

Historically, norms of accounting played an important role in corporate financial reporting. Starting with the federal regulation of securities, accounting norms have been progressively replaced by written standards. While social norms are maintained through an informal process of social as well...