Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Search Site Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Citation John Harry Evans; Introduction. The Accounting Review 1 July 2014; 89 (4): 1195. https://doi.org/10.2308/accr-10396 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe Accounting Review Search Advanced Search

It is well recognized that a critical step in the development of modern accounting research was the landmark study in 1968 by Ray Ball and Phil Brown (Ball and Brown 1968). Their study demonstrated the usefulness of accounting by documenting an association between financial statement information and stock prices, a market phenomenon. At about the same time, behavioral accounting researchers began to explore associated questions at the individual level, seeking to determine how accounting information affects individual decisions. Recent research in accounting and finance has drawn on results of behavioral experiments in an attempt to explain market anomalies, as first identified by Ball and Brown themselves (1968, 173).The two studies in this neuroscience forum provide a deeper understanding by again pushing the focus down to the more fundamental or “ultimate” source within an individual's brain. As Greg Waymire notes in his commentary, this approach has the potential to offer new insight into the relation between longstanding accounting principles and fundamental human behaviors reflected in social norms such as reciprocity and fair-dealing. In the process, this work offers accounting researchers new tools for understanding and explaining both individual and market behavior.

Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Search Site Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Citation John Harry Evans; Annual Report and Editorial Commentary for The Accounting Review. The Accounting Review 1 November 2012; 87 (6): 2187–2221. https://doi.org/10.2308/accr-10306 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe Accounting Review Search Advanced Search

The design of CEO incentives is particularly important for firms in financial distress. We compare the resolution of CEO incentive problems in distressed firms between the 1980s versus the 1990s, focusing on how changes in contractual provisions, as well as in the executive labor market, resulted in a shift to a new equilibrium. Our analyses provide evidence that the increased bargaining power of creditors, together with changes in the use of contractual provisions in the 1990s, enabled creditors to more effectively retain highly skilled CEOs with firm-specific knowledge and provide them with incentives to improve firm performance. Data Availability: Data used in this study are available from public sources identified in the article.

As part of a federal government initiative to increase efficiency and quality, in 1996 the United States Veterans Health Administration (VHA) radically restructured its organizational design and management processes. This study uses 1992–1998 clinical, workload, and financial data to examine the effect of this reform on performance. Several previous government attempts to introduce private sector management practices, such as management by objectives (MBO) or program planning and budgeting system (PPBS), have been largely unsuccessful. In contrast to prior reforms, the current restructuring introduced coordinated changes in the VHA organizational structure, performance measurement, and reward systems. Our results document that, following the reorganization, the VHA cost per patient declined significantly and various quality measures improved. Our analysis suggests that reduction in excess capacity and the more intense use of remaining capacity are among the primary explanations for the VHA achieving the observed cost reductions. These findings suggest that coordinated changes in organizational structure, performance measures, and incentives can create value for public enterprises even though control mechanisms are generally more limited in these environments than in the private sector.