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...

Failures in corporate governance of many major US corporations in 2002 suggest that it may be useful to fundamentally rethink the structure of institutions of accounting, auditing, corporate governance and executive compensation. Replacement of the system of authoritative standards by a...

Under what conditions is government regulation better at protecting market participants than private, evolving, market-driven protections? An intriguing answer to that question emerges if we examine a relatively unregulated area of market participant protection: e-commerce privacy. In the United...

The benefits of top down financial reporting regulation over the past eight decades are less obvious than its failures to achieve the purported goals. Perhaps it is time to give a chance to an alternative approach of regulatory competition

Improving financial reporting calls for achieving a fine balance between codification of accounting rules, and development of norms whose enforcement depends on judgment about shared values and expectations in society. Over the past century, financial reporting has pursued codification in excess...

Two key assumptions underlying the regulation of U.S. financial reporting are the need to mandate the certification of financial statements, and to require that this certification be performed by independent auditors. Private incentives to demand (and supply) certification are thought to be...