Financial Accounting Standards Research Initiative

Dan Dhaliwal, Vic Naiker, and Farshid Navissi recently posted a paper up on SSRN titled “The Association between Accruals Quality and the Characteristics of Accounting Experts and Mix of Expertise on Audit Committees.” Their research looks at post-SOX data and various characteristics of audit committees that have an impact on accrual quality. “Our results indicate a [...] Read more > >

Sanjeev Bhorjraj, Robert Libby, and Holly Yang have a paper on SSRN titled “Analyzing Guidance at the Firm Level: The Association between Guidance Frequency, Guidance Properties, and Market Reactions.” The paper is the first to examine the relationship between the frequency and type of guidance issued by firms and the accuracy of that guidance and [...] Read more > >

Stephen Ryan, Research on the Fair Value Option, Tuesday, 4pm ET * Update: You can read more about this Round Table Event and see the archived video here. Read more > >

02/03/2010 Steven Orpurt, Research on Cash Flow Reporting, Wednesday, 11am ET Update: View the archived video and comments about this Round Table here. Read more > >

I always enjoy listening to the State of the Union address. If you missed it, I highly recommend at least reading a summary like the one found here. One of the things that President Obama proposed was that congress “provide a tax incentive for all large businesses and all small businesses to invest in new plants [...] Read more > >

On Wednesday, Feb 3rd, 11 am ET, we will be joined by Steven Orpurt of Pepperdine University. Steve will be discussing his paper, entitled “Do Direct Cash Flow Disclosures Help Predict Future Operating Cash Flows and Earnings? This work is co-authored with Yoonseok Zang, also of Singapore Management University, and was recently published in [...] Read more > >

Wow, i just learned the following.  Did not know this … From:  Comment from Michael A. Moran and Abby Joseph Cohen, Goldman Sachs: Global Markets Institute – Accounting Policy Update: SEC takes action on climate change disclosures On January 27, 2010 the SEC approved, by a 3-2 vote, new interpretative guidance on existing disclosure requirements related [...] Read more > >

To what extent do lenders or credit analysts care about lease renewal options? In the proposed lease accounting model, lessees will capitalize the longest lease term that is more likely than not to occur. This means that renewal periods that a lessee is not obligated to renew will be measured as part of the lease [...] Read more > >

Stephen Ryan (NYU) joins FASRI to talk about his recent research on the fair value option in the banking industry.  Stephen is one of the most respected accounting academics studying banking and financial instruments these days, so I expect people will have plenty of questions beyond the research study that will form the heart of [...] Read more > >

Richard Mergenthaler has a paper on SSRN titled “Principles-Based versus Rules-Based Standards and Earnings Management.” When I read the title I thought for sure the article would argue that principles-based standards lead to more earnings management because there was more flexibility. To my surprise, the paper presents arguments that rules-based standards lead to more earnings management. [...] Read more > >

I was excited this past week to read that the IASB recently published a second exposure draft on a portion of IAS 37 Provisions, Contingent Liabilities, and Contingent Assets. I know, excitement might be too strong of a word, but I was looking forward to seeing whether the IASB’s decision on how to measure onerous [...] Read more > >

Typically at the start of every New Year, we spend time thinking about the prior year and all the interesting and exciting events that have happened. 2009 was certainly a banner year for accounting standard setting. As I was thinking back over all that happened and trying to determine what was the most surprising thing [...] Read more > >

I was thinking about Jim’s comments about research helping standard setters.  A long time ago there was some debate on the ability of archival researchers to do ex ante research … some back and forth on that point.  I’m not an archival person so I don’t think about whether they can do ex ante or not, and [...] Read more > >

I spent a good part of the weekend reading PhD files.  It seems like a fairly strong year, perhaps because the economy has closed out other opportunities.  (Many applicants hail from Wall Street).  I’d love to hear your impressions of any application pools you have seen.  But if you are one of the students who [...] Read more > >

An interesting article was posted on SSRN last month titled Rules-Based Accounting Standards and Litigation by Dain Donelson, John McInnis, and Richard Mergenthaler. The article discusses the association between rules-based standards and litigation and whether rules serve more to convict or to defend firms. In the conclusion, the authors write: Overall, we find support for the [...] Read more > >

On Saturday January 23, I will be moderating a panel discussion entitled, “Practice-Relevant Researchable Accounting Issues: Practitioners’ Views.”  The panelists are John Hepp, Partner with Grant Thornton, Bob Laux, Senior Director of Financial Accounting and Reporting at Microsoft Corporation, and Scott Taub, managing director of Financial Reporting Advisors and former Deputy Chief Accountant of the [...] Read more > >

Jim Leisenring’s remarks at yesterday’s roundtable were great.  In the portion related to the interaction of research and standard setting, he reminded us of two papers in Accounting Horizons on the interaction: “Academic accounting research and the standard setting process” by Katherine Schipper and “Accounting research: On the relevance of research to practice” by Jim [...] Read more > >

Prof. David Albrecht has an extended post on The Summa arguing for the politicization of accounting standards: It is the responsibility of a country’s government to adjudicate between competing economic interests in the selection of accounting standards. This is what government does.  For example, governments are good at levying and collecting taxes, which has been going [...] Read more > >

Jeremy summarized nicely some of the discussion points that Jim raised during his discussion with Jeffrey Hales.  I won’t repeat his summary.  However, I found Jim’s comments to be particularly insightful today.  I came away with some very good clarification of a few issues. Here’s one that I found particularly interesting: Regarding his objection to the “management [...] Read more > >

* UPDATE: The archived video is shown above. Please note that the welcome screen is displayed for the first 11 minutes and 10 seconds. You’ll want to skip to 11:10 in the video to begin seeing the discussion. We just finished a great Roundtable with Jim Leisenring from the IASB. We will get the video online [...] Read more > >