Since 1998, the world s leading experts on accounting and regulation have convened in a series of workshops to explore and analyze emerging issues in the field. They have covered a wide array of topics, including corporate governance, auditing, financial disclosure, international standards boards, and the dynamics of markets and institutions. Most recently, they have focused on the role that accounting practices and policies may have played in the global financial crisis of 2008.In this volume, the editors showcase contributions from the workshops that represent the full spectrum of issues and perspectives relating to accounting and regulation. Each paper incorporates the most current examples and references to reflect the latest insights, with an emphasis on exploring future implications for theory and research, practice, and policymaking. "

As foreign direct investment of U.S. multinational firms increases rapidly, some key questions emerge from this trend: What is the true nature of multinationality and what are its impacts on firm performance? Both questions are answered in this book through an examination of the nature of multinationality and its alternative measures and the effect of the degree of multinationality on firm performance, where firm performance is expressed by firm value, financial performance, prediction performance of earnings forecasts, diversification strategy and ownership structure, and corporate financing. The book is of value to all those interested in international business, finance and accounting issues, including professional accountants, business executives, teachers, researchers, and students.

This professional book is designed for managers involved in the use of quantitative techniques to solve accounting-based problems. Belkaoui takes the reader in hand and carefully reviews the mathematical and statistical techniques needed to understand quantitative models, and then introduces those models of relevance to accounting areas of cost-volume-profit analysis, cost estimation, linear programming, cost control, inventory models, capital budgeting, and network analysis.

This study utilizes the rich archives which survive at Durham Cathedral to examine the way in which accounting methods and systems were adopted and adapted to manage income and expenses, assets and liabilities in changing economic environments.

This book contains a summary of the laws that govern business associations and are designed to help accountants spot potential problems their clients may encounter. The author, an attorney and environmental consultant, divided the material into three parts: corporations, partnerships, and agencies. Each begins with a discussion and explanation of applicable legal terminology, followed by the steps necessary to create the type of entity, the duties and responsibilities of officers and other relevant matters. The dissolution of each type of business also receives coverage. This material provides a good refresher course on the basics of business law for the busy practitioner. "Journal of Accountancy"

This book fills a major gap in the literature for professional accountants by offering a comprehensive discussion of the law concerning the three major types of business associations: corporations, partnerships, and agencies. As Wolf notes at the outset, accountants must have adequate knowledge of the laws governing business associations if they are to successfully perform professional services for their clients--the failure to spot potential legal problems can often spell disaster for a particular business. Wolf offers a current, accurate, in-depth treatment of the laws of business association in one logically organized source, specifically written to address the needs and concerns of accounting professionals.

Following an introduction, the volume is divided into three major sections each dealing with a specific type of business association. For each, Wolf draws on the relevant federal and state laws, uniform laws, common law, and judicial decisions to present a clear picture of significant issues. Section One deals with laws involving management, shareholder's rights, corporate financial structure, mergers and acquisitions, securities regulation, and dissolution. In the section devoted to partnerships, separate chapters address partnership formation, property, rights and liabilities of partners, termination, and limited partnerships. The final section covers agency creation, duties, liabilities, and termination. Taken as whole, this volume represents an important addition to the professional literature available to accountants in both corporate and private practice.

A firM's value consists of its assets-in-place and growth opportunities: its investment opportunity set. IOS plays a major role in determining a firM's corporate and accounting strategies, and how the marketplace reacts to them. Riahi-Belkaoui shows how IOS can be examined, measured, and used as one way to understand the various accounting and nonaccounting strategies espoused by management. His book fills a gap in the literature on this timely and provocative topic, and provides useful knowledge for upper management, academics, and graduate-level students.

The importance of the IOS concept is beginning to be acknowledged in the literature of empirical accounting, finance, and management. There, the investment opportunity set is introduced as an explanatory or moderating variable of the relationship between accounting and economic phenomena and various predictor variables. Riahi-Belkaoui explicates a concept of growth opportunities or IOS (Chapter 1) and provides a general model for its measurement (Chapter 2). He shows its role in a general valuation model based on dividend yield and price earnings ratio (Chapter 3), in the relationship between profitability and multinationality (Chapter 4), in the determination of capital structure (Chapter 5), in a general model of international production (Chapter 6), in a general model of corporate disclosure (Chapter 7), in the relationship between systematic risk and multinationality (Chapter 8), in a model of reputation building (Chapter 9), and earnings management (Chapter 10). He goes on to discuss its role in explaining the relative market value compared to the accounting value of a multinational firm in Chapter 11, and in differentiating between the usefulness of accrual and cash flow based on valuation models in Chapter 12.

In this book, Belkaoui turns his attention to significant problems he sees facing the accounting profession as a whole and examines their effects on the way accounting is practiced, on accountants' clients, and on business in general. The problems derive, Belkaoui explains, from new developments in the accounting environment including the organizational climate in CPA firms and the rising incidence of fraudulent cases. Arguing that these problems, if not resolved, will lead to a crisis of confidence in accounting and increasing government regulation of the profession, Belkaoui both identifies their causes and proposes solutions to avert a crisis in the field.

The book is divided into six chapters, each of which addresses a particular problem in contemporary accounting. Belkaoui begins by describing a new conflictual order in the accounting environment and goes on to examine particular conflicts generated by the profession's heavy reliance on credentialism, its role in the fragmentation of services in CPA firms, and its tenuous position in the courts. The following chapters show how the credibility of accounting has been shaken by fraudulent cases and explores ways in which the accounting work process has declined. Finally, Belkaoui explores problems associated with the high levels of job dissatisfaction and turnover in CPA firms and problems in the production of accounting knowledge. Students of accounting as well as practicing professionals will find both a sobering assessment of current accounting practices and an illuminating look at potential solutions.

Part of a series which aims to present work across a broad spectrum of regulation issues, with papers covering a wide range of topics. The volumes review essays of recent books, offering insights into regulation and its processes. A glossary related to securities, law and accounting is included.

This book charts the regulatory changes at the heart of capitalist economies; the financial reporting on financial markets. It is a unique contribution interconnecting issues both of contemporary political science and accounting research. The book contains in-depth descriptions of regulatory settings (and changes) in six countries: Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States and aims to takes a close look at drivers of change such as crises and globalization. The book also links these drivers of change with moderating institutional structures such as the legal and financial systems, but also the welfare states in place. Taken together, it shows how a trend to more transnationalization in accounting emerges but also its likely limits.

Ahmed Belkaoui focuses on the contributions human information processing research can make in the study of accounting decision-making. Both a review and synthesis of the current literature and a springboard for further research, Human Information Processing in Accounting explores the basic psychological concepts underlying human decision-making and their applications to accounting. As Belkaoui notes at the outset, accounting information is used primarily for decision-making. Human information processing in accounting is designed to understand, describe, evaluate, and--most importantly--improve the decision process used in an accounting or auditing context. Belkaoui's book provides accounting students and practitioners with the first comprehensive overview of the ways in which human information processing research has been used to study and enhance accounting decision-making.

Divided into six parts, the volume begins by examining the policy-capturing process and the Brunswick Lens model used in this type of research. Subsequent chapters address the models of risky choice used to predict or describe how individuals make these types of choices, the application of probability elicitation and revision to accounting research and practice, the heuristics and biases individuals use to reduce complex cognitive processes to simpler judgmental operations, and the application of cognitive science to accounting. A number of chapters include appendices illustrating the type of accounting studies that exist for each of the human information processing paradigms presented. Taken as a whole, Belkaoui's work represents a pioneering attempt to focus and organize the field of human information processing in accounting.

"Advances in International Accounting" is a referred, academic research annual, that is devoted to publishing articles about advancements in the development of accounting and its related disciplines from an international perspective. This serial examines how these developments affect the financial reporting and disclosure practices, taxation, management accounting practices, and auditing of multinational corporations, as well as their effect on the education of professional accountants worldwide. "Advances in International Accounting" welcomes traditional and alternative approaches, including theoretical research, empirical research, applied research, and cross-cultural studies.

Part of a series which aims to present work across a broad spectrum of regulation issues, with papers covering a wide range of topics. The volumes review essays of recent books, offering insights into regulation and its processes. A glossary related to securities, law and accounting is included.

This is a refereed, academic research annual, devoted to publishing articles about advancements in the development of accounting and its related disciplines from an international perspective. This serial examines how these developments affect the financial reporting and disclosure practices, taxation, management accounting practices, and auditing of multinational corporations, as well as their effect on the education of professional accountants worldwide.

This book presents the most current trends in the field of finance and accounting from an international perspective. Featuring contributions presented at the 17th Annual Conference on Finance and Accounting at the University of Economics in Prague, this title provides a mix of research methods used to uncover the hidden consequences of accounting convergence in the private (IFRS) and public sectors (IPSAS). Topics covered include international taxation (from both the micro- and macroeconomic level), international investment, monetary economics, risk management, management accounting, auditing, investment capital, corporate finance and banking, among others. The global business environment shapes the international financial flows of finance and the demand for international harmonization of accounting. As such, the field of global finance and accounting has encountered some new challenges. For example, policy-makers and regulators are forced to restructure their tools to tackle with new features of trading at global capital markets and international investment. This book complements this global view of development with country-specific studies, focusing on emerging and transitioning economies, which are affected indirectly and in unforeseen ways. The combination of global perspective and local specifics makes this volume attractive and useful to academics, researchers, regulators and policy-makers in the field of finance and accounting.

Although many books have been published in the Soviet Union on the theory and practice of accounting in the United States, this is the first work to provide Americans with an analogous exchange of information. Ehiel Ash and Robert Strittmatter describe the details of accounting procedure for Soviet industrial enterprises as it exists in the USSR's managed socialist economy. The methodology of accounting is examined as a required first step in the evaluation of Soviet enterprise data, and the continuing interdependence of accounting, planning, statistics, and economic policies is also stressed.

Since accounting methodology is the only means in the Soviet Union for collecting, classifying, and summarizing economic information, Ash and Strittmatter characterize a firm grounding in Soviet theory and practice as essential for the examination of statistical data on the Soviet economy. They divide their work into three parts, covering the political and economic environment of Soviet enterprise management, accounting theory as the basis for creating accounting practice, and accounting for economic resources and processes in industrial enterprises. Among the topics discussed are control through accounting, and the Soviet government's use of it to direct industrial activity and the economic behavior of its people; and the influence of Marxist/Leninist philosophy on economic planning, market activity, and enterprise recordkeeping and financial reporting. This unique work will be a useful resource for students and professionals in the fields of accounting, Soviet studies, and international business, as well as a valuable addition to both public and academic libraries.

Although the accounting standards regime has been tightened significantly in the 1990s, there are still a plethora of devices which can be used by businesses to show their performance in a better light. This book shows the potential for new schemes to evade the tougher rules. Illustrated with examples of corporate creativity, it demonstrates that despite the new regime, creative accounting is still possible. Ian Griffiths is the author of Creative Accounting.

This volume contains papers presented at the 1996 Center for International Education and Research in Accounting Conference. The theme of transitional and developing economies struggling with the introduction and implementation of international accounting standards is evident throughout the papers. While current events often seem to outstrip our ability to keep up, these papers provide insights into current events in the adoption and application of the international accounting standards.

Belkaoui offers a thorough examination of the various factors that affect the judgment/decision process in an accounting setting. As the author notes at the outset, an appreciation of the various influences on accounting decisionmaking is of critical importance to users, preparers, and verifiers of accounting information--particularly in an era of multinational corporations and global markets. In order to explain the judgment process in accounting, Belkaoui proposes a new theoretical model which assumes both that a cognitive process guides judgments and decisionmaking in accounting and that the schemata underlying this process are shaped by the crucial factors of national culture, language, organizational culture, and contractual agreements. The author examines each of these influences in turn, offering a comprehensive guide to the practitioner and researcher seeking empirical hypotheses to explain the judgment process in the international accounting arena.

The bulk of the volume is devoted to an in-depth examination of each of the five relativisms which affect the accounting judgment/decision process--cognitive, cultural, linguistic, organizational, and contractual. In each chapter, the author explores the theory and findings underlying these relativisms in the social sciences and their contribution to explaining the judgment/decision process in accounting. The final chapter synthesizes the preceding material and develops an international accounting theory based upon the judgment/decision model. Throughout, Belkaoui focuses on the complexity and richness of the judgment/decision process, cautioning that the evaluation of any accounting information must take into account the various critical influences on this process.

Corporations must decide how much to invest in the natural capital (e.g., air, water, land, and forests) that they depend upon for their economic survival. How do they project the costs of essential investments under conditions of scientific and legislative uncertainty? An innovative roadmap is laid out with the help of a case study based on the actual experiences of a forestry company that made such an attempt. Everyone interested in developing a long-range environmental strategy will find this book instructive: senior corporate management, accountants, internal auditors, academics, students, and environmentalists. Based on the author's research for the United Nations, a new methodology is advanced to compute fuller costs. In addition to practical guidance on the theory and practice of calculating these costs, the author illustrates alternatives to traditional capital budgeting models. A whole range of concepts and applications are offered on natural capital; intergenerational equity; waste minimization; asset depletion rates; application of risk-management principles to costing natural capital; off-balance sheet natural assets; modern definition of profit for natural and business capital. Pioneering reporting methods for returns on investment and product costs are recommended in the concluding chapters.

Quality is becoming the most important competitive issue. The customer demands quality making it imperative to businesses to take it in serious consideration. It has become a matter of survival to provide a quality product. The concern with quality demands a) a better definition of the quality concept for each firm; b) a constant monitoring and planning of the quality standards and actions; and c) a continuous control of operations towards a quality objective. This is essentially the message and the content of this book: That quality needs to be defined contingent on the specific activities of the firm; that quality needs to be constantly monitored through a specific planning and recording system and finally, that quality is essentially the result of strong control activities. Belkaoui reviews the various approaches to the specification of the quality concept, the type of recording systems appropriate for its monitoring and the detailed control procedures needed to achieve it.

The book should be very helpful to executives involved in a total quality control program, management accountants involved in the control of quality and accounting students in managerial accounting courses.

With limited exceptions, present accounting rules do not address software accounting, and state and federal rules of taxing software remain ambiguous. Up-to-date, comprehensive, and written by the leading authority in this field, "Accounting and Tax Aspects of Computer Software Manufacturing" explains these rules for anyone involved with the tax or accounting aspects of software, including accountants, attorneys, and corporate executives.

This book focuses on how American and non-American multinational companies can plan and manage their international business in the Gulf countries. Important issues of accounting, auditing, finance, taxation, marketing, and managerial issues are covered in each of the selected Gulf countries.

If you're preparing for The American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers' (AIPB) bookkeeping certification test, you need an easy- to-follow test-preparation guide that gets you up to speed quickly in all of the bookkeeping basics, from setting up a company's books and recording transactions to managing employee payroll, handling government paperwork, and closing out the books. You need "Bookkeeping Workbook For Dummies."

With demonstration problems, complementary examples, and multiple-choice questions you'll find in this user-friendly primer, you'll sharpen your bookkeeping skills for the real world as you increase your ability to perform well on any test. Chapter quizzes let check your progress as you go, and step-by-step answers show you where you went wrong (or right) each problem. You'll feel your confidence --and competence--growing as you learn how to: Perform a wide variety of financial transactionsUse key concepts and skills with real-world bookkeeping problemsDesign a bookkeeping systemTrack day-to-day business operationsKeep journals for active accountsUse blank working papers and spread sheetsHandle cash entries and develop internal controlsCalculate and pay employee withholding taxesDepreciate assetsProve out your books at year's endPrepare tax returns as set up for a new year

Complete with Top Ten lists for managing cash, monitoring accounts, and finding additional helpful resources, "Bookkeeping Workbook For Dummies" is the test-prep guide you need to help you ace the certification test and speed your way into a successful and rewarding career.

The leading professional accounting bodies in Britain today boast more than a quarter of a million qualified members and accountants are moving into top management positions in increasing numbers. Accountants have become the foremost professional grouping in British business management. The Priesthood of Industry documents the rise of the accountancy profession, from the handful of accountants listed in the trade directories of the major cities in the late-eighteenth century to the huge commercially-oriented firms of the late-twentieth century. The authors focus on the individual: the professional accountant, and adopt an economic determinist analysis to explain the rise of public practice and the transfer of staff to industry in increasing numbers. They also consider the routes through which this transfer of skills took place, and identify demand and supply side factors to explain the professional accountant's present hegemony in business management.