Digital Commons Network^™

Risk and uncertainty are inherent in the environment and functions of accounting. Accounting reports, systems, norms, and rules help people decide, and also determine how they decide in such environment. Diverse normative theories and descriptions of coping with risk and uncertainty yield different implications for accounting. Chambers was an articulate, forceful, and celebrated proponent of market values, while Ijiri did the same for historical costs. Elements of accounting theory that diverge in their emphases on historical cost versus market values can be linked to the divergence in the theories of risk and decision making. This largely unrecognized link between the …

Risk and uncertainty are inherent in the environment and functions of accounting. Accounting reports, systems, norms, and rules help people decide, and also determine how they decide in such an environment. Diverse normative theories and descriptions of coping with risk and uncertainty yield different implications for accounting. Chambers was an articulate, forceful, and celebrated proponent of market values, while Ijiri did the same for historical costs. Elements of accounting theory that diverge in their emphases on historical cost versus market values can be linked to the divergence in the theories of risk and decision making. This largely unrecognized link between …

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 insufficient, and independence is thought to be necessary for quality audit. In this study, we collect archival data on certification activity in the economy, and conduct a field experiment on an unregulated online market for certification of baseball cards to investigate the validity of these assumptions. Our results show that: (1) Private markets for certification services are ubiquitous …