"Little has been published on accounting standards in Japan and how they have developed. The purpose of this study is to construct a historical narrative of the interplay between accounting standards in Japan and theories of regulation. The authors demonstrate that delegation of the authority...

1 Overview (Kunio Ito). Part 1 Earnings Attributes and Corporate Behavior -- 2 What do Smoothed Earnings Tell Us about the Future? (Yusuke Takasu and Makoto Nakano) -- 3 The Effect of Accounting Conservatism on Corporate Investment Behavior (Souhei Ishida and Kunio Ito) -- 4 Matching expenses...