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...

In this paper, we study information asymmetries about verifiability between a principal and an agent. Our main result is that an information asymmetry about verifiability not only reduces the usefulness of a given performance measure for stewardship purposes, it can completely destroy that...

This paper explores quot;revenue accountingquot; in contrast to traditional quot;cost accounting.quot; Revenue accounting is to serve information needs of managers and investors in planning and controlling a firm's sales activities and their financial consequences, especially in the E-Commerce...

Performance evaluation with multiple tasks and multiple measures is a favorite indoor sport, replete with coaches, clinics and Monday morning quarterbacks. Here we tweak the familiar LEN setting to exhibit a modest reluctance to feed it an ever increasing supply of measures

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...

This essay analyzes some problems that accounting standard setters confront in erecting barriers to managers bent on boosting their firms' financial reports through financial engineering (FE) activities. It also poses some unsolved research questions regarding interactions between preparers and...