Business Commons^™

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 standard setters. It starts by discussing the history of lease accounting to illustrate the institutional disadvantage of standard setters relative to preparers in their speeds of response. Then, the essay presents a general theorem which shows that, independent of how accounting standards are written, it is impossible to eliminate all FE efforts of preparers. It also discusses the desirability of choosing accounting …

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 …