GAAP mandates a variety of departures from historical cost valuation. We consider a simple model that produces corresponding variety, depending on prevailing regulatory objectives and economic conditions. The model entails entrepreneurial investment in an asset followed by private information...

We report on a panel discussion at the 2001 CMU Accounting Mini-conference under the title "Intellectual Foundations of Accounting." We provide a background and the motivation for the discussion and present the remarks by the four panelists. A number of perspectives are taken. Sunder emphasizes...

Subgame perfect equilibrium predictions of ultimatum bargaining games correspond poorly to the data gathered from human subjects in laboratory environments. Attempts to reconcile this discrepancy have taken one or more of three routes: (1) expanding the agent foresight and scope of decisions,...

Subgame perfect equilibrium predictions of ultimatum bargaining games correspond poorly to the data gathered from human subjects in laboratory environments. Attempts to reconcile this discrepancy have taken one or more of three routes: (1) expanding the agent foresight and scope of decisions,...

We study the intertemporal properties of accounting conservatism with a focus on managerial incentives. In our main model, conservatism results in smaller expected payouts to the manager (agent) in early periods and larger expected payouts in later periods. Conservatism shifts (ambiguous)...

Using a setting in which an employer seeks information about talent in order to achieve a proper match between talent levels and tasks, we provide a comparative analysis of two performance evaluation systems widely used in practice ― an absolute performance evaluation system (APE) and a...

In a previous paper we establish the equality between accounting numbers and information in a classical Arrow-Debreu economy. One of the conditions is complete market, that is, there exists an Arrow-Debreu security for every possible state realization. In this paper, we relax this condition and...

In this paper we establish an equivalence between accounting numbers and information. The information numbers are denominated in entropy which is a measure of uncertainty and is a function of probabilities only. Mutual information is defined as the reduction of entropy when an information source...

This study is to examine the economic consequences of asset measurement bases for illiquid, productive assets. We explicitly model both the entrepreneur (the seller) and the investor (the buyer) investment decision in a setting where the entrepreneur's hidden action (investment decision) and...