Financial Accounting Standards Research Initiative

Accountability has been defined as, “responsibility to someone or for some activity.” Almost without fail, when I think of accountability in the realm of financial reporting, I think of the principal-agent relationship. The agent (company management), is responsible to the principal (shareholders) for firm performance. Thus, one of the primary goals of financial reporting is [...] Read more > >

I’ve got a research question I’m hoping someone can help with. I’m looking for prior research where a single agent reports to multiple principals. For example, a single employee reports to his direct boss and to his product manager or a CFO reports to the Board and to the CEO, etc. How does the multiple principal/multiple [...] Read more > >

Reading Kothari, Ramanna and Skinner’s answer to the question “What Should GAAP Look Like?” makes me want to get a better handle on the different perspectives academics are bringing to their criticism of accounting standards and the standard-setting process.  This will probably be the first of several posts, and I want to start with the [...] Read more > >