Financial Accounting Standards Research Initiative

According to Bloglossary, To bleg is to write a blog entry or comment for the sole purpose of asking for something. Today, I am asking for input on what roundtable speakers you would like to see over the coming academic year.  As I indicated in Reimagining FASRI, we will be planning roundtables to serve three objectives:  bringing [...] Read more > >

This post starts with class materials, but ends with some questions for researchers.  As I was writing my EPS case for Intermediate II this spring, I ran into a kind of strange problem.  I picked 4 or 5 companies with convertible debt and fairly sizable dilution effects.  I then went to their EPS footnote to [...] Read more > >

The last couple of weeks have been busy ones behind the scenes at FASRI.  Last week, Phil Shane (current research fellow), Lynn Rees (incoming research fellow) and I met with the FASRI Steering Committee (FASB Board Member Tom Linsmeier, FASB Senior Advisor Jim Leisenring, Research Director Ron Lott, and Technical Director Susan Cosper).  Yesterday, the [...] Read more > >

The answer is: A LOT! For $180, you can attend two half day sessions on Sunday at the AAA in Denver digesting all of the latest scoop on revenue recognition, leasing, pensions, and other big ticket items. Tom Linsmeier from the FASB and Pat McConnell of the IASB lead this session, giving you both [...] Read more > >

Last Wednesday, I enjoyed our most recent FASRI Round Table.  Ben Couch discussed the new guidance for making Fair Value Measurements (hereafter, FVM) as well as the new disclosures about FVM.  Part of the discussion centered distinguishing between level 2 and 3 measurements.  For a FVM that uses some market information, how does the accountant [...] Read more > >

Undergrads are nitpicked about their citations. MLA, Chicago, etc. Must be perfectly consistent. You will lose points for every missing comma or period. Unfortunately, this is not a skill I became proficient at. In fact, without the help of Google I couldn’t tell you the difference between MLA and Chicago formats. When I started a PhD [...] Read more > >

One of my goals this summer is to organize my academic papers. I need a system to keep track of the papers I’ve read, allow searching within documents (both PDF and word), and assist with bibliography creation. Rather than experiment with 20 different pieces of software, I thought I’d ask the FASRI audience for their [...] Read more > >

The FAF described its new Post-Implementation Review (PIR) initiative, whereby a team created within the FAF will systematically review existing standards to assess the extent to which they accomplished their originally-intended objectives. I personally think that this is a valuable initiative and that it appears to be well-designed. A thought that I had in listening to the [...] Read more > >

Update: Here are two slide decks related to the session described below:  First click on "Read more" below and then click here for the first slide deck. First click on "Read more" below and then click here for the second slide deck. Unfortunate technological difficulties prevented us from recording the session.   The FASRI Round Table series continues at 4pm [...] Read more > >

Is anyone aware of 10b5 shareholder litigation due to delayed recognition of goodwill impairment?  At least two working papers imply that firms expose themselves to such actions when they delay the recognition of goodwill impairment.  The first working paper, by Muller, Neamtiu and Riedl, suggests that insiders knowingly sell stock prior to the firm recording [...] Read more > >

I am working on a research paper on the unit of account. Well, no it’s really about bifurcation of compound financial instruments. But wait, it’s really about aggregation. I guess one could say it’s about linking the presentation of things too. My head is whirling. Exactly. The point of the [...] Read more > >

Implicit in the FASB’s conceptual framework is a balance sheet (rather than an income statement) perspective. This has nothing to do with the relative decision usefulness of balance sheet vis-à-vis income statement information. Instead, it is the result of a decision (which I agree with) to define income in terms of changes in net assets. Despite [...] Read more > >

Okay, so this is a stupid question .. but i don’t know the answer to it. When citing the new codification, one includes the applicable section number. But what do you do for FASB ?? What year? Do we go to the year the underlying standard was issued or current year? [...] Read more > >

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is pleased to announce that Lynn Rees, Andersen Professor of Accounting in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, has accepted the FASB 2011-2012 Research Fellowship, which will begin in July. Background Each year, the FASB selects a member of the academic community to serve as a research fellow.  The Research [...] Read more > >

UPDATE:  Here is the direct link to the video of the testimony. –RJB Tomorrow morning at 9:30 AM, The U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs will hold a hearing entitled: “The Role of the Accounting Profession in Preventing Another Financial Crisis” FASB Chairman Leslie Seidman and other prominent individuals in the accounting field will testify. [...] Read more > >

See forthcoming Fortune, where accountants are in HUGE demand in this down economy. Great news for us! Go to this link to read more…. Read more > >

UPDATE:  Here are two files for the roundtable:  a 2006 review paper by Christine Botosan called "Disclosure and the Cost of Capital:  What Do We Know?" and  recent working paper on voluntary environmental disclosures by Plumlee, Brown, Hayes and Marshall. The FASRI Round Table series continues at 4pm Eastern time on Wednesday, April 6th. Rob Bloomfield, Jeff Hales [...] Read more > >

Please click here to here the archived recording of this session. The FASRI Round Table series continues at 4pm Eastern time on Tuesday, March 29th. Rob Bloomfield, Jeff Hales and Phil Shane will host the program, and our guest speaker is Russ Lundholm, Professor at the University of British Columbia.  Russ will tee up a discussion of [...] Read more > >

I just read a fascinating article on CFO.com titled Missing: Public Companies. I encourage you to take a look. Summarized very briefly, the article discusses trends in the number of companies listed on US stock exchanges. It’s been going down, both in absolute terms and relative to other countries. In the US, companies are delisting [...] Read more > >

FASB Research Fellow Phil Shane asked me a thought-provoking question last week:  what do we know about the differences between people’s stated beliefs about the value of information and their actual decisions?  I am hoping readers might help me flesh out a few preliminary thoughts. First, a comment on the relevance of the question for standard [...] Read more > >