Financial Accounting Standards Research Initiative

Pragmatics, Implicature and The Efficiency of Elevated Disclosure, an article now posted on SSRN that sprang from my thoughts about the FASB’s Disclosure Framework Project, which I discussed in my presentation on the Theories of Disclosure panel at the 2011 AAA Meetings in Denver. Here is the abstract: This paper uses a Pragmatic theory of language (drawn [...] Read more > >

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I’m not trained in behavioral economics, but I recognize the potential that this research methodology can have on standard setting.  Recently, the Miller paper was informally discussed among some FASB staff as to whether it might have implications for the FASB’s disclosure framework project.  That discussion is the impetus for this post, which requests information [...] Read more > >

I have been spending most of 2011 immersed in managerial accounting as I completely rework my course on that topic from the ground up.  This has led me to rethink the Conceptual Framework as well.  One of the most striking differences between the managerial accountant’s and financial accountant’s approaches seems to be that the former [...] Read more > >

The AAA meeting in Denver had a number of interesting panel sessions.  One that I found enlightening concerned financial reporting and the financial crisis.  The panelists were Greg Waymire, Mary Barth, and Shyam Sunder.  I was not sure what to expect.  The punchline was that none of the panelists felt financial reporting was a prime [...] Read more > >

The deadline for the SEC to make a decision on whether or not to accept IFRS for domestic issuers is drawing near.  Obviously, this is an important decision that will have tremendous implications for accounting educators and the FASB.  In a recent speech in China, Hans Hoogervorst, the new Chairman of the IASB, commented that [...] Read more > >

Many accounting academics think that matching expenses to their associated revenues produces an earnings pattern that is useful to decision makers. As a result, these academics think that any decline in matching will produce less useful earnings information for financial statement users. Along these lines, a recent study by Dichev and Tang (2008) in The [...] Read more > >

This week, the FASB and IASB announced plans to re-expose their proposed standard on leasing. This project was, until late last year, slated to be finished in July 2011. However, given the majors changes that have been raised during redeliberations, the boards have concluded that they are likely to end up with a document that [...] Read more > >

The Dow was at about 14,000 during October-November 2007 and at about 7,000 in February 2009. This resulted in losses in many companies’ pension funds. Many companies had unrealized losses exceeding the 10% corridor boundary, which meant the “excess” losses had to be gradually amortized into pension expense under U.S. GAAP.  For example, in 2009-2010 [...] Read more > >

I have been reading a recent paper by Mark Bauman (Univ. of Northern Iowa) and Richard Francis (Univ. of Texas – El Paso) published in Accounting Horizons (June 2011) on the topic of lessor accounting. For those academics who follow this standard setting topic, you already know there is a relative dearth of research that [...] Read more > >