Typical textbook treatments of tax-advantaged retirement savings focus on legalistic characteristics such as contribution limits and early withdrawal penalties. Popular press articles often present a myriad of details on the effects of inflation, rates of return, expected tax rates, ordinary...

Purpose: To explore the role of accounting discretion in a principal-agent setting, where accounting information is used in performance evaluation. The agent, who is to be evaluated, may choose one from among several allowable accounting methods. However, limited audit resources allow only for...

Agency research on capital budgeting has demonstrated that a principal can reduce information rents by contracting on several investment projects in aggregate rather than on each investment project individually. We investigate the robustness of this result in a model that facilitates comparative...

By its very nature, management control research can be complex and difficult to understand, and hence challenging to introduce into the classroom. Nevertheless, it is important for accounting instruction to retain a connection between teaching and research. This note provides guidance on how...

A large body of evidence indicates individuals keep promises even if self-interest dictates otherwise. Two rationales have been put forth. First, promises form an emotional commitment to keep actions and deeds consistent, referred to as the commitment rationale. Second, promises change the...

We review the development of structured financial products, discuss their accounting treatment and illustrate their valuation using simple numerical examples. The crucial element we incorporate is the possibility that the underlying assets in structured financial products have correlated...

Accounting is often viewed from a legalistic rather than economic perspective. Finance, on the other hand, is deeply rooted in economic theory, but at its heart is built on assumptions of frictionless markets. Neither perspective fully incorporates the rich economic environment in which we find...

A worker can contribute pre-tax dollars to a private pension plan. Under a progressive tax, this feature reduces income taxes. Ippolito (1986) argues that an individual in 1979 can reduce lifetime taxes by 20%. We re-examine his analysis using the complete time-series of US income tax history...