The benchmark: what should GAAP look like? -- Goodwill hunting: the political economy of accountability for mergers and acquisitions -- The shrinking big N: rule-making incentives of the tightening oligopoly in auditing -- Why fair value is the rule: the changing nature of standard setters --...

Prudent, verifiable, and timely corporate accounting is a bedrock of our modern capitalist system. In recent years, however, the rules that govern corporate accounting have been subtly changed in ways that compromise these core principles, to the detriment of the economy at large. These changes...

We examine how Big N auditors' changing incentives impact their comment-letter lobbying on U.S. GAAP over the first thirty-four years of the FASB (1973-2006). In particular, we focus on the influence of auditors' lobbying incentives arising from two basic factors: managing expected litigation...