We examine the lobbying behavior of state governments and their financial statement users in the development of public pension accounting standards GASB 67 and 68. We find that states' opposition to liability increasing provisions is increasing in the severity of pension plan underfunding,...

By the end of the 20th century, the competitive structure of the public accounting industry evolved into a tight oligopoly. We predict a reversal of this trend, because new issuers of public equity, who steadily replace legacy companies in the set of public companies, display less verifiable...