Accounting measurement and disclosure rules have a significant impact on the real decisions that firms make. In this essay, we provide an analytical framework to illustrate how such real effects arise. Using this framework, we examine three specific measurement issues that remain controversial:...

HRA is in nascent stage when it comes to practical applications. There is an urgent need to shift the focus from viewing human resource (HR) as a cost center to profit center, for consideration of employees as an asset. It is the need of the hour to make HRA as a part of mandatory global...

Calls for greater transparency of accounting information were consistent in media discourse after the accounting crisis early this century. Our analysis of the media suggests different emergent meanings were associated with these calls of transparency and an underlying ‘taken for grantedness'....

This study empirically analyzes the long term and short term accuracy of over 3000 individual firm pension accounting estimates of rates of return on pension assets over ten consecutive years (2001-2010). We find that the point estimates allowed by GAAP create verifiability challenges for...

A contract governs a trade between a buyer and a supplier. This contract specifies: (i) a cost reimbursement and (ii) a profit sharing arrangement of the inter-organizational relationship. We examine, the role the accounting system choice has on the efficiency of the IOR when the supplier can...

Purpose: This paper analyses what factors drive a company's decision to align financial and management accounting policies as a measure of integration of management accounting and financial accounting at the highest hierarchy levels of a company. Design/methodology/approach: Research hypotheses...

The authors review recent literature on the role of corporate financial reporting and transparency in reducing governance-related agency conflicts between managers, directors, shareholders, and other stakeholders—most notably financial regulators—and suggest some avenues for future research....

RAAs (Retained Asset Accounts) are a life insurance innovation that is likely of small value to most beneficiaries. In many cases, it will make the most financial sense for a beneficiary to write a check to himself for the entire policy proceeds and deposit those funds into an insured bank...