Standard setters and most academics maintain that accounting standards ought to rest on a set of guiding principles stated explicitly in a “conceptual framework.” The FASB and IASB are currently involved in a project to refine conceptual framework documents developed earlier. At this point,...

The Canadian Accounting Standards Board (AcSB) issued an exposure draft on a proposal to adopt a separate 'Made in Canada' GAAP for private enterprises. This new GAAP is justified as being consistent with the current FASB/IASB conceptual framework, but as being responsive to the different...

Certification of financial reports is tightly regulated with the intent to ensure the quality of this service. In order to place this market within a larger perspective, Part I of this paper presents archival data on certification activity in the economy. The finding of widespread availability...

This paper addresses the issues that confront the FASB and IASB in developing a new conceptual framework document. First, we suggest characteristics that a conceptual framework ought to exhibit. Most of these suggestions are based on our critique of the existing framework and the FASB-IASB work...

We report results of a field investigation of the process by which clients and prospective auditors acquire information about each other and enter an engagement. Often we assume that knowledge required for contracting is readily known by contracting agents, while in fact it must be acquired...

We report results of a field investigation of the process by which clients and prospective auditors acquire information about each other and enter an engagement. Often we assume that knowledge required for contracting is readily known by contracting agents, while in fact it must be acquired...

The Canadian Accounting Standards Board (AcSB) recently issued an exposure draft to adopt separate GAAP for private enterprises. This new GAAP is justified as being consistent with the current FASB/IASB conceptual framework, but is sensitive to the different cost/benefit considerations facing...

The FASB and the IASB recently issued a joint discussion paper entitled, Preliminary Views on Revenue Recognition in Contracts with Customers. The Boards requested comments on whether their proposed model for revenue recognition would improve the usefulness of the financial statement information...