Accounting History Review最新文献

{"title":"The role of Irving Fisher in the development of fair value accounting thought","authors":"G. Markarian","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2018.1542230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2018.1542230","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Cardao-Pito and Ferreira do a marvellous job in putting Irving Fisher front and centre in the development of fair value accounting thought, expanding our understanding of one of history’s most respected economists. Fisher’s theories played an important role in defeating early socialists’ intellectual arguments, and yet US corporations of today pay as much tax as their foreign counterparts. The world has, voluntarily and democratically, become more Fisherian. The unwarranted one-sided criticism of Cardao-Pito and Ferreira of the current capitalist systems does little to diminish Irving Fisher’s stature as the first celebrity economist who had access to presidents and helped shape twentieth-century economic policy, including accounting.","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":"29 1","pages":"181 - 190"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77452457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Information ecosystems","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2018.1528118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2018.1528118","url":null,"abstract":"Like pipes in a wall crucial to having running water in a home, the informational infrastructure was nearly invisible. Use of information proved so routine, indeed mundane, that like using a faucet or bathroom fixtures, people did not think about it, because it was always present. It is information’s pervasive, embedded nature that perhaps accounts for why we [...] have not paid much attention to it. But now we should, because as happens, once a phenomenon is named or is made obvious, it becomes easier to optimize its use. (Cortada 2016)","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":"116 6","pages":"203 - 206"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72554115","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The lack of impact of fair value accounting: a commentary on ‘“fair value” accounting as the normative Fisherian phase of accounting’","authors":"C. R. Baker","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2018.1542229","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2018.1542229","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This commentary argues that the question of fair value measurement is a non-issue from the standpoint of accounting standards setting, as well as for issuers and users of financial statements. In our view, fair value measurements only apply to a small number of accounts and to a small number of companies. In fact, over the past century we observe little interest on the part of companies, professional accountants and standards setters in applying fair value accounting measurements to general purpose financial statements over the last century. While Cardao-Pito and Ferreira make a good case that similarities exist between the work of Irving Fisher and accounting pronouncements pertaining to fair value, I contend that this is a coincidence.","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":"8 1","pages":"191 - 198"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84792880","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Coincidences, contingencies, multiplicities and patterns","authors":"C. McWatters","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2018.1545162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2018.1545162","url":null,"abstract":"Considered one of the most famous movie lines – perhaps given that Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) delivers it when Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), his former flame, suddenly walks into his Café Américain in Casablanca. Rick’s comment is definitely more memorable than ‘what a coincidence’. For historians, the concept of coincidence generally has a negative connotation – an inadequate basis for the explanation of events. Hekster (2016, 217) notes that historians frequently link coincidence to ‘contingent circumstance’, ‘chance’ even ‘luck’. In this issue, we examine not ‘gin joints’ but the place of Irving Fisher in accounting. Yet we consider the broader theme as follows: Can we trace definitively the emergence of ideas and concepts to a particular place and time? Alternatively, for theories with a ‘history’, is it possible to confirm their provenance? When explaining the influence of Y on Z, do we leave open and admit the very real possibility that this influence results more from our interpretations versus what others would argue to be historical fact. It leaves open the space in which (seemingly) similar ideas emerge coincidentally in different places at different times, or perhaps re-emerge contingently as circumstances and events change. Researchers in cultural evolutionary theory have examined these issues in terms of how ‘cultural evolutionary processes can link spatial and temporal dynamics in producing predictable patterns’ (Müller and Winters 2018, 22). While the disciplines of economics and finance have not neglected Fisher, the debt owed to him in accounting has not had the same acknowledgement. Our focus is the possible link and contribution of his theoretical works to fair value accounting and by extension, financial reporting and standard setting. Cardao-Pito and Ferreira champion Fisher’s legacy and argue for greater recognition of his theory of economic and accounting value, market prices and capitalism. Garen Markarian and Charles Richard Baker provide alternative narratives, which both support and challenge these central themes. My position, as editor, has been one of constructive neutrality. The study by Cardao-Pito and Ferreira is rich in detail and evidence. At a basic level, it encourages us to re-visit our understandings of the origins of fair value accounting. The commentaries by Markarian and Baker motivate us to take these arguments with a blend of scepticism and enthusiasm, with Markarian offering more of the latter and Baker suggesting a healthy dose of the former. The three narratives offer three individual accounts yet not the entire account. It may be possible for us to accept some of what all the authors provide as evidence without accepting necessarily all of what they contend. As consumers of historical works, Evans reminds us as of the need to take conclusions as tentative:","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":"PC-21 1","pages":"145 - 148"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84838031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Demystifying fair value accounting: rejoinder to Baker and Markarian","authors":"Tiago Cardao-Pito, João da Silva Ferreira","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2018.1545165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2018.1545165","url":null,"abstract":"‘Fair value’ accounting is often taken for granted. Regulators and standard setters argue that fair value norms must be implemented due to market imperatives (Bhimani 2008; Young 2003, 2006; Young and Williams 2010). Several papers argue in its defence, and others against it, without discussing its origins and societal pathways. In many countries around the world, practitioners must follow fair value practices in accordance to regulations and standards issued by the IASB and FASB. However, although the historical origins of fair value should have been settled by now, they have not been settled yet. Our study (Cardao-Pito and Ferreira 2018) contributes to demystifying fair value accounting. We have shown that a parallelism exists between contemporary fair value accounting norms and Irving Fisher’s theoretical writings from more than a century ago (Fisher 1906, 1907). Moreover, we have demonstrated that fair value accounting is based upon a specific theory, not the demonstrated truth – a theory that is also highly influential in economics and related disciplines (Cardao-Pito 2016, 2017; Dimand and Geanakoplos 2005; Friedman 1994, 37; Markarian 2018; Tobin 1987, 2005). Thus, we wish to challenge the strange sense of academic, normative and practical authority that this fragile theory currently seems to have. It is by explaining its origins, concepts and foundations that we can expose this theory to the standard of scientific inquiry regularly faced by other theories. We are very grateful to Markarian (2018) and Baker (2018) who have served as referees to our study that has benefitted immensely from their learned advice. Likewise, we are very grateful to Cheryl McWatters, the editor, for allowing this important discussion to continue within the pages of Accounting History Review. Both Markarian and Baker find our study to be interesting, recognise the seriousness of our scholarship, and acknowledge the empirical connection between fair value and Fisher’s writings as identified. Thus, we have attained the key aims of our research, which pleases us very much. The Fisherian framework, fair value accounting and economics must not be taken for granted. Accounting has a very important role in organising our societal life and practice. We must not allow relevant theories to be under-researched or under-tested. Nonetheless, Baker (2018) and Markarian (2018) have some divergent opinions with respect to our conclusions, and significant differences between their respective arguments. Could we step aside, and allow them to exchange ideas and arguments, their conversation could bring important contributions not just to the accounting literature, but to economics, business, organisation and finance as well. The wealth of research questions that they raise can only be tackled eventually in future research. Besides some smaller divergences, Baker (2018) agrees with us in many respects. We highlight, for instance, our criticism about fair value accounting and our pro","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":"9 1","pages":"199 - 202"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81697889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘Fair Value’ accounting as the normative Fisherian phase of accounting","authors":"Tiago Cardao-Pito, João da Silva Ferreira","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2018.1541000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2018.1541000","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT ‘Fair value’ accounting has been described as a new ‘actuarial/forward-looking’ phase of accounting regulations and standards. In this study, we present the hypothesis that ‘fair value’ regulations and standards are aligned with Irving Fisher’s theoretical writings (written more than a century ago) about economic and accounting value, and market prices. Through content analysis, we reveal a literal correspondence of Fisher’s writings to key fair value norms from the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), such as the usage of alleged forecasts of future cash flows and discount rates in explaining market values and prices. Aligning with shareholders/owners interests, Fisher’s theoretical framework can be found in contemporary fair value accounting norms.","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":"22 1","pages":"149 - 179"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75302150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Indeed, ‘they do things differently there’","authors":"C. McWatters","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2018.1506553","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2018.1506553","url":null,"abstract":"‘Why study the past? Those of us who pursue historical research or teach courses in history will not be lost for a response to this question. It is a question frequently posed to authors who submit manuscripts, re-phrased more pointedly as ‘why is your study of interest?’ At some stage, every researcher must respond with more than ‘because it is’. One might respond with citation counts, downloads and the ‘impact’ metrics that litter the research landscape as indicators of value and interest. On a more basic level, the response to ‘why history’ is dynamic as we confront and navigate the past. In his introduction to The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited, David Leventhal (2015) discusses how the past became foreign, arguing that until recently – in historical terms – historians viewed the past as something ‘as though just then occurring (p. 6)’. As Leventhal notes, ‘the past ain’t what it used to be (p.9).’ Indeed, our own discipline and this journal bear witness to this truism. Nonetheless, where dynamism exists, there is also continuity. History may interface with other disciplines, adopt and adapt theories from areas of social science, dabble (or more than dabble) with Cliometrics, but it remains history. We can look to the many hyphenated histories, some of which have come and gone, been transformed or drifted in and out of fashion. Patrick Manning (2003) has expressed thoughtful optimism about history’s continuity amidst on-going debates, change and innovation. In this issue, we have studies which represent the diversity of our scholarship and the space for such diversity within our journal. In their examination of community building amidst the amalgamation of Milan and Corpi Santi, Enrico Guarini, Francesca Magli and Alberto Nobolo demonstrate how accounting change and innovation took place due to external forces but also underscore the role played by internal actors engaged in this institutionalisation process. When discussing this study with the author team, I suggested that they reflect on their conclusion. While I am not a huge proponent of ‘lessons for today’, it was a question that I asked them to contemplate. The final paragraph of their study encapsulates their response. Its emphasis on community building in light of efforts to restrict boundaries and borders is a thoughtful commentary and one which makes their study all the more relevant in current circumstances. In a very different study, Martin E. Persson and Stephan Fafatas bring renewed and welcome attention to the work of Harold C. Edey, thanks to a chance encounter in the archive, specifically Edey’s one-act play used to explore the issues of profit determination during periods of changing prices. The play is of interest on many levels from its treatment of on-going issues of accounting measurement, its innovative pedagogy, and as a reminder of how accounting theory and ‘big questions’ do matter – elements that appear lost in the current training of accounting (doctoral) stu","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":"48 1","pages":"1 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90897551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Accounting, the ‘Art of Interessment’ and the ‘Good Spokesperson’: innovation in action in luxury high fashion (1959–1979)","authors":"Massimo Sargiacomo","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2018.1501399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2018.1501399","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study investigates the adoption of technological innovation, as well as the rise of accounting, management and organisational innovative practices in the luxury high-fashion industry, basing our analysis on the iconic brand Brioni. Grounded in the prior literature on the history of innovation and customisation, we develop a socio-technical analysis of the relocations, technology innovations and production transformations in 1959–1979. In this period – recalled by fashion historians as full of technical, production and process innovations – the company built a production-consumption chain organised around the strategy of demand-pull product customisation, by adopting and adapting technologies imported from elsewhere, and deployed by the work of hundreds of local tailors and seamstresses in tandem with external foreign trainers. We argue that the continuous ‘Art of Interessment’, which sustained technological, product and process innovations, was promoted by a team of ‘judiciously chosen Spokespersons’, who helped to translate company policy into practice, thus expanding production, controlling costs, reducing the manufacturing cycle and improving quality. The socio-technical investigation illustrates the pivotal role played by the rise and spread of innovative accounting and labour practices for customers of variable taste, size and geometry. In a related manner, the study highlights the building of a new architecture of performance management and quality information systems which, in tandem with changing accounting practices, helped to sustain Brioni's success across the observed two decades.","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":"24 9 1","pages":"85 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88562357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Josephine Maltby, 1954–2017","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2018.1468394","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2018.1468394","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":"325 1","pages":"129 - 134"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79715914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ad hoc referees – Accounting History Review 2017","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/21552851.2018.1472899","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21552851.2018.1472899","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43233,"journal":{"name":"Accounting History Review","volume":"31 1","pages":"137 - 137"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2018-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75415961","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}