An important scholar in the history of accounting, Geoffrey Whittington's numerous articles cover a broad spectrum of the field and are both sharply insightful and extremely significant. He has made important contributions to the topics of inflation accounting, accounting theory and methodology and standard-setting, and he has conducted a number of valuable empirical studies. This remarkable collection pulls together essays and articles and encompasses his work on empirical studies based on company accounts, specification of empirical models, price change accounting, taxation and regulation, and regulation of accounting and auditing. Accompanied by a new introduction and conclusion, this significant volume will be extremely useful for historians of accounting as well as accountancy practitioners and researchers.

Providing a clear and concise overview of the conduct of applied research studies in accounting, Malcolm Smith presents the principal building blocks of how to implement research in accounting and related fields.

Author of cult classics The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur offers a simple, counterintuitive cash management solution that will help small businesses break out of the doom spiral and achieve instant profitability. Conventional accounting uses the logical (albeit, flawed) formula: Sales - Expenses = Profit. The problem is, businesses are run by humans, and humans aren't always logical. Serial entrepreneur Mike Michalowicz has developed a behavioral approach to accounting to flip the formula: Sales - Profit = Expenses. Just as the most effective weight loss strategy is to limit portions by using smaller plates, Michalowicz shows that by taking profit first and apportioning only what remains for expenses, entrepreneurs will transform their businesses from cash-eating monsters to profitable cash cows. Using Michalowicz's Profit First system, readers will learn that: · Following 4 simple principles can simplify accounting and make it easier to manage a profitable business by looking at bank account balances. · A small, profitable business can be worth much more than a large business surviving on its top line. · Businesses that attain early and sustained profitability have a better shot at achieving long-term growth. With dozens of case studies, practical, step-by-step advice, and his signature sense of humor, Michalowicz has the game-changing roadmap for any entrepreneur to make money they always dreamed of.

Spending on M&A has, in aggregate, grown so fast that it has even overtaken capital expenditure on increasing and maintaining physical assets. Yet McKinsey, the leading management consultancy, reports that "Anyone who has researched merger success rates knows that roughly 70% fail". The idea that businesses might be using huge and increasing sums of shareholders’ money for an activity that more often than not leads to failure calls into question the information on which M&A decisions are based. This book presents statistical studies, case material, and standard-setters’ opinions on company accounting before, during, and after M&A. It documents the manipulation of annual accounts by acquirers ahead of share for share bids, biased forecasts of post-merger earnings by bidders, and devices to flatter earnings when recording the deal. It explores the challenges for standard-setters in regulating information flows during and after M&A, and for account-users wishing to learn from financial statements how a deal has affected performance. Drawing on a wide range of international examples, this readable book is targeted not just at accounting specialists but at anyone who is comfortable reading the serious financial press, is intrigued by what is going on in the massive M&A market, and is concerned with achieving better-informed M&A. As such it might be of particular interest to business executives, lawyers, bankers, and investors involved in M&A as well as graduate students interested in researching or learning about the role of accounting in M&A.

Raymond John Chambers was born just over a century ago on 16 November 1917. It is more than fifty years since his first classic, Accounting, Evaluation and Economic Behavior, was published, more than forty since Securities and Obscurities: Reform of the Law of Company Accounts (republished in 1980 as Accounting in Disarray) and over twenty since the unique An Accounting Thesaurus: Five Hundred Years of Accounting. They are drawn upon extensively in this biography of Chambers’ intellectual contributions, as are other of his published works. Importantly, we also analyze archival correspondence not previously examined. While Chambers provided several bibliographical summaries of his work, without the benefits of reviewing and interspersing the text with correspondence materials from the Chambers Archive this study would lack an appreciation of the impact of his early childhood, and nuances related to his practical (including numerous consultancies) and academic experiences. The ‘semi-biographical narrative’ codifies article and editorial length exercises by the authors drawing on parts of the archive related to theory development, measurement and communication. Other parts are also examined. This allows us to respond to those critics who claim his reforms were naive. They further reveal a man of theory and practice, whose theoretical ideas were solidly grounded on observations from his myriad interests and experiences. Many of his practical experiences have not been examined previously. This approach and the first book-length biography differentiates this work from earlier analyses of Chambers’ contribution to the accounting literature. American Accounting Association’s 2021 Thomas J. Burns Biographical Research Award winner, this book provides evidence to support the continued push for the reforms he proposed to accepted accounting thought and practice to ensure accounting is the serviceable technology so admired by Pacioli, Da Vinci and many other Renaissance pioneers. It will be of interest to researchers, educators, practitioners and regulators alike.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

The second edition of Craig Deegan and Jeffrey Unerman’s market leading text presents the various theories of financial accounting through a balanced and dynamic approach. Students are given all the tools to engage with these theories and are encouraged to critically evaluate and challenge them. Clearly written and user friendly, this new edition provides comprehensive coverage of internationally developed accounting theories from a European perspective.