Financial Accounting Standards Research Initiative

I think everyone would agree there are many reasons to enter a lease. However, I think we would all also agree that if the only reason to enter a lease was to obtain a certain accounting treatment then the accounting should be changed. Bill Bosco raised some very interest points related to the leasing industry [...] Read more > >

If you assumed that accounting standards wouldn't get sucked into the highly charged health care debate, you guessed wrong! From the New York Times An association representing 300 large corporations urged President Obama and Congress on Monday to repeal a provision of the health care overhaul that prompted AT&T, Caterpillar and other companies to announce substantial [...] Read more > >

The great thing about people who represent an industry being affected by an accounting standard is that they are highly motivated to provide content.  Bill Bosco sent me a number of files for this week’s Roundtable.  The ELFA comment letter on leasing discusses both lessor and lessee accounting, and objects strongly to the notion that [...] Read more > >

Bill Bosco, who will be our speaker at today’s Roundtable, sent along the text of his comment letter on leasing to the IASB.  Here it is, in its entirety: Sir David Tweedie                                                                              July 12, 2009 Chairman IASB Dear Sir: I support the theory that operating lease obligations arising from material operating leases should be capitalized.  The issue of capitalizing operating [...] Read more > >

Bill Bosco, who will be our speaker at today’s Roundtable, sent along the text of his comment letter on leasing to the IASB.  Here it is, in its entirety: Sir David Tweedie                                                                              July 12, 2009 Chairman IASB Dear Sir: I support the theory that operating lease obligations arising from material operating leases should be capitalized.  The issue of capitalizing operating [...] Read more > >

On March 9, Scott Dyreng led a session on how social norms affect people’s behavior.  I made a post a few days later on the subject with a cite to work by Steve Huddart.  Yesterday I saw another example of how social objectives affect employee utility functions, but this one seems quite different. Adam Grant, [...] Read more > >

The FASRI Roundtable this week (11am ET, Weds Mar 31, 2010) will be lead by Bill Bosco, a member of the IASB/FASB International Working Group on leas accounting, Principal of Leasing101, and long time member of the Accounting committee of the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association (ELFA), a trade association representing the $650 billion dollar [...] Read more > >

The paradoxical title of this post is quoted from this article in Science News about the inconsistent and often inappropriate use of statistics in academic research.  I would strongly recommend every accounting researcher read the article, make sure they understand the criticisms, and then promptly ignore most of them. The article emphasizes that statistical significance is [...] Read more > >

NOTE: THIS EVENT WILL BE RESCHEDULED, DATE TBD. After a two week Spring break hiatus (during which we faculty were all catching up on work, of course), FASRI returns with a Roundtable featuring Stephen Cooper, current IASB member and former Managing Director in the Equities business of UBS Investment Bank in London from 1997 to 2008.  [...] Read more > >

NOTE: THIS EVENT WILL BE RESCHEDULED, DATE TBD. After a two week Spring break hiatus (during which we faculty were all catching up on work, of course), FASRI returns with a Roundtable featuring Stephen Cooper, current IASB member and former Managing Director in the Equities business of UBS Investment Bank in London from 1997 to 2008.  [...] Read more > >

Somebody asked me about Nike’s redeemable preferred stock. SFAS 150 is not my area of expertise really, but .. the question that came to me was “is this in the mezannine?” I understood that nothing was there anymore. This company (nike) seems to be putting it in the mezannine but not really .. [...] Read more > >

I just came across this and have listened only to part of the first series (of five) but it seems quite interesting (and humorous). http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r401p/A_Brief_History_of_Double_Entry_Bookkeeping_Episode_1/ Read more > >

My colleague here at Texas, John McInnis, just sent around an interesting email to the UT faculty. I thought I’d share it more broadly. He raises an interesting question..   The web is a abuzz with the release of the Lehman Brothers post-mortem by the Bankruptcy Examiner yesterday.  I wasn’t aware of potential accounting gimmicks:  http://www.economist.com/business-finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15695099  Many are starting [...] Read more > >

Part of Tuesday’s Roundtable with Scott Dyreng focused on how social norms might interact with accounting and financial reporting.  In the typed and voice chat, reference was made to a paper by Paul Fischer and Steven Huddart, titled “Optimal Contracting with Endogenous Social Norms” (American Economic Review, Sept 2008, 1459-75).  I really like the paper, [...] Read more > >

In class yesterday, I stumbled upon an interesting apparent inconsistency between accounting for pensions and the accounting for compensated employee absences, which I had taught several weeks ago. When teaching my students about accruing for vacation pay, I observed that it seemed that if we knew for certain that employees were likely to get a raise [...] Read more > >

Join us Tuesday, March 9 at 4pm when Scott Dyreng of Duke University discusses his recent research on the cost of violating covenants on private debt.  The key message of the paper is that firms are willing to pay extra taxes in order to avoid debt covenant violations.  The study uses [...] Read more > >

About a year ago (March 12, 2009) the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Entities held a hearing titled “Mark-to-Market Accounting: Practices and Implications.”  The Committee members directed several hours of fairly hostile questioning to FASB Chairman Bob Herz and SEC Chief Accountant Jim Kroeker.  If you have not seen [...] Read more > >

Mark Evans of Indiana University will lead our next roundtable discussion, Wednesday March 3rd, 11am ET).  Here is the abstract from his recent paper, written with Leslie Hodder and Pat Hopkins, exploring fair value in commercial banks: For a sample of commercial banks during 1994–2008, we find that accumulated fair value adjustments for investment securities are [...] Read more > >

The SEC essentially punted today on the decision to adopt IFRS in the U.S.  Acknowledging that the SEC is in the same position they were in November 2008 (when the proposed roadmap was originally issued), Mary Schapiro said the SEC hopes to be in a position by 2011 to make this decision. One of the [...] Read more > >

The February 23rd (4pm ET) Roundtable will feature a discussion of Emissions Trading Schemes, led by University of Colorado research Naomi Soderstrom, along with insights from the Assistant Project Manager on the FASB's Emission Trading Schemes project, Shayne Kuhaneck. Click here for details on the session. * UPDATE: The archived video of this Round [...] Read more > >