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...

Based on extant literature, we review the positive theory of GAAP. The theory predicts that GAAP's principal focus is on control (performance measurement and stewardship) and that verifiability and conservatism are critical features of a GAAP shaped by market forces. We recognize the advantage...