Financial accounting standards in the U.S. are developed by private standard setting organizations (SSOs) that operate under the oversight of a government agency. The primary accounting SSO (FASB) has been criticized for writing too many standards (standards overload), the complexity of its...

We present data on privacy practices in e-commerce under the European Union`s formal regulatory regime prevailing in the United Kingdom and compare it with the data from a previous study of U.S. practices that evolved in the absence of government laws or enforcement. The codification by the E.U....

This paper proposes an accounting for revenues as an alternative to the proposals currently begin aired by the FASB and IASB. Existing revenue recognition rules are vague, resulting in messy application, so the Boards are seeking a remedy. However, their proposals replace the traditional...

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...

In seeking to replace accounting conventions by concepts in the pursuit of principles-based standards, the FASB/IASB joint project on the conceptual framework has grounded its approach on a well-known definition of income by Hicks. We welcome the use of theories by accounting standard setters...

When transactions have multiple attributes, achieving uniformity in their classification depends on whether similarities or dissimilarities are of interest; uniformity with respect to both is not possible. The pursuit of uniform written standards at the expense of social norms diminishes the...