Firms are increasingly adopting a global perspective. Nowhere is this more evident than in the accelerating internationalization of the world's financial capital markets. In just five years the dollar volume of debt and equity securities placed annually by firms outside of their national borders...

Hawkins' historical survey leads him to conclude that (1) the standards by which financial reporting practices are evaluated are, in the long run, determined by persons external to the firm and (2) that when management's financial disclosure standards persistently lag behind these external...