This paper articulates the arguments for and against introducing competition into the accounting standard-setting process in the U.S. by allowing individual corporations to issue financial reports prepared in accordance with either FASB or IASB rules. The paper examines several arguments...

This paper studies how an accountant's method of aggregating information in a financial report is affected by differences in the reliability and relevance of components of the report. We study a firm that hires an accountant to produce a report that reveals information to investors regarding the...

In this paper, we study a principal-agent problem in which (1) the manager has private information about, and control over, the mean and variance of his outputs; (2) the manager?s outputs consist of a sample of independently distributed cash flows, all having mean and variance determined by the...

This paper studies voluntary disclosures in a model in which investors probabilistically become informed about whether a firm has received information. The firm's value is established via a first price, sealed bid, common value auction. The paper demonstrates that the threshold level determining...

This essay analyzes some problems 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...

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...