The number of institutions and enrollment in higher education continue their rapid growth, but the quality of this education remains uncertain. A small number of state-subsidized institutions attract a thin top layer of talent from each year's cohort. High selectivity of admission to these elite...

Closed exchange and production-and-exchange economies may have multiple equilibria, a fact that is usually ignored in macroeconomic models. Our basic argument is that default and bankruptcy laws are required to prevent strategic default, and these laws can also serve to provide the conditions...

Kautilya's Arthaśāstra, from the end of the fourth century BC, provides interesting insights into the problems of governance, accounting and control in the Mauryan society. This paper uses the extant English translations of Arthaśāstra to summarize the structure of the Mauryan economy,...

In recent decades, financial reporting has shifted away from reliance on social norms towards predominance of written standards enforced by authority. This change has influenced accounting thought, practice, regulation, instruction, and research. Moreover, monopoly jurisdiction of accounting...

Closed exchange and production-and-exchange economies may have multiple equilibria, a fact that is usually ignored in macroeconomic models. Our basic argument is that default and bankruptcy laws are required to prevent strategic default, and these laws can also serve to provide the conditions...

The number of institutions and enrollment in higher education continue their rapid growth, but the quality of this education remains uncertain. A small number of state-subsidized institutions attract a thin top layer of talent from each year's cohort. High selectivity of admission to these elite...

We compare general equilibrium economies in which building and maintenance of a depreciating public facility is financed either by anonymous voluntary contributions or by taxing agents on their income from private production. Agents start with an endowment of private goods and money, while the...

We compare laboratory general equilibrium economies in which maintenance of a depreciating public facility is financed either by anonymous voluntary contributions or taxes. Agents individually allocate their private goods between consumption and investment in production. The experimental...

Attainment of rational expectations equilibria in asset markets calls for the price system to disseminate traders' private information to others. It is known that markets populated by asymmetrically-informed profit-motivated human traders can converge to rational expectations equilibria. This...

We examine four key conceptual tensions that are at the heart of many financial reporting dilemmas: stocks vs. flows, ex-ante vs. ex post, conventions vs. economic substance, and top-down design vs. bottom-up evolution as sources of accounting practice. Associated with each of these conceptual...