It has been said that standards issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) are more congruent with a principles-based approach to standards setting than those of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Revelations concerning accounting manipulations at Enron Corp.,...

Accounting history has tended to ignore the accounting research enterprise, focusing instead on particular episodes or periods, such as histories of standards setting or histories of the accounting profession. In effect, methodological and theoretical differences within the accounting research...

At a congress of the European Accounting Association, held more than 20 years ago, the President of the Belgian Institute of Registered Auditors, Paul Behets (1998), delivered a plenary speech with the title: Are Financial Statements an Obsolete Product? Behets’ answer was “no,” that...

During the first half of the twentieth century, “accounting theory,” developed primarily by accounting scholars and academics, provided the primary basis for the practice and teaching of financial accounting in the United States. Since the creation of the Financial Accounting Standards Board...

Accounting conventions, norms, and standards play an important role in modern society in various areas related to the measurement of economic performance, allocation of capital, regulation of commercial activity, and taxation. From a historical perspective, the emergence of accounting...

In this chapter, we study the evolution of the auditor’s report from its emergence more than 150 years ago to the present. During this period, the standard auditor’s report has evolved from a rudimentary form to its current and more sophisticated structure with a clearly defined title,...

The development of the public accountancy profession in the last 200 years has increased the demand for the labor of professional accountants and enhanced the role and status of the professional public account. This increase in both the demand for the labor of professional accountants and for...