The two levels of accounting, microaccounting on one hand and macroaccounting on the other, indicate not only that accounting is a rapidly expanding field but also that accounting plays an important role in today's complex economy. The purpose of this article is to explore the interrelationship between microaccounting and macroaccounting. More specifically, it attempts, firstly, to identify macroaccounting as a branch of accounting; secondly, to examine briefly the interrelationships among the four sub-areas of accounting and economics, i.e., microaccounting, macroaccounting, microeconomics, and macroeconomics; thirdly, to compare some of the basic similarities and dissimilarities between microaccounting and macroaccounting; and finally to explore potential influences of macroaccounting on microaccounting. The article concludes that the demand for additional information from accounting for managerial, investment, and analytical purposes points to the need for more constructive and creative thinking in accounting.

The indispensableness of a national position statement in addition to the national income accounting system for macroeconomic analysis can scarcely be overemphasized. But this hardly seems to be recognized by most economists who seem to have placed greater emphasis on income accounts than on stock accounts. Indeed, students of economics have failed to visualize the vantage of combining position and income statements in their analytical work. It is clear that to use but one of the two statements to analyze an economy is at best a partial study. Moreover, the macroaccounting mechanism will become an incomplete system without a balance sheet. In the application of accounting to economics it should be pointed out that the national balance sheet alone cannot furnish all the information needed for national position analysis. For a penetrating study a combination with other branches of macroaccounting seems desirable, such as regional and sector balance sheets, national income accounts, input-output tables, moneyflows, and balance of payments. In order to explore fully the functions of national position statement, a series of statements covering a period of several years will give a more meaningful study than the use of any single statement.

The two terms, microaccounting and macroaccounting, are created mainly for the purpose of recognizing the extent of the progress of accounting today. The term macroaccounting has the advantage over others in identifying explicitly the area to which accounting is applied. Macroaccounting is still expanding and the discussion of its six major branches in this paper is by no means exhaustive. Macroaccounting may be studied at two levels, business macroaccounting and economic macroaccounting. It is obvious that in this paper efforts have mostly been devoted to the former. Eventually, a set of conventions, assumptions, and standards for macroaccounting will be developed as in microaccounting. It is also suggested that most of the principles and standards of microaccounting may be applied to macroaccounting with modifications and additions. In examining the various branches of macroaccounting, one must note that the development of a national balance sheet has lagged behind in a manner that tends to cripple the entire system of macroaccounting. Another major task is to integrate the several branches of macroaccounting regarding classifications of accounts and systems of recording transactions. Only in this way can the full usefulness of macro- accounting be reached. The problem of the valuation basis is a complex one. No single method can answer all the questions. No matter what valuation bases are selected, the principles of consistency and comparability should be strictly observed. The need for offering macroaccounting courses in accounting departments was also suggested.

This study shows the influence of investor sentiment on the market's mean–variance tradeoff. We find that the stock market's expected excess return is positively related to the market's conditional variance in low-sentiment periods but unrelated to variance in high-sentiment periods. These findings are consistent with sentiment traders who, during the high-sentiment periods, undermine an otherwise positive mean–variance tradeoff. We also find that the negative correlation between returns and contemporaneous volatility innovations is much stronger in the low-sentiment periods. The latter result is consistent with the stronger positive ex ante relation during such periods.

This paper examines the relation between corporate lobbying and fraud detection. Using data on corporate lobbying expenses between 1998 and 2004, and a sample of large frauds detected during the same period, we find that firms’ lobbying activities make a significant difference in fraud detection: Compared to nonlobbying firms, on average, firms that lobby have a significantly lower hazard rate of being detected for fraud, evade fraud detection 117 days longer, and are 38% less likely to be detected by regulators. In addition, fraudulent firms on average spend 77% more on lobbying than nonfraudulent firms, and they spend 29% more on lobbying during their fraudulent periods than during nonfraudulent periods. The delay in detection leads to a greater distortion in resource allocation during fraudulent periods. It also allows managers to sell more of their shares.

We show that the financial sector’s asset supply elasticities are sufficient statistics summarizing its macroeconomic effects for a large class of financial frictions. These elasticities are crucial for a wide range of policy questions, ranging from the size of fiscal multipliers to the relative effectiveness of asset purchases targeting the financial sector versus tax cuts targeting households. Workhorse macroeconomic models imply different values of these elasticities, generating output responses to policies that differ by orders of magnitude. We construct empirical measures of these elasticities and evaluate their policy implications in a quantitative model with household heterogeneity and illiquidity.

A four-factor model with two "mispricing" factors, in addition to market and size factors, accommodates a large set of anomalies better than notable four- and five-factor alternative models. Moreover, our size factor reveals a small-firm premium nearly twice usual estimates. The mispricing factors aggregate information across 11 prominent anomalies by averaging rankings within two clusters exhibiting the greatest return co-movement. Investor sentiment predicts the mispricing factors, especially their short legs, consistent with a mispricing interpretation and the asymmetry in ease of buying versus shorting. A three-factor model with a single mispricing factor also performs well, especially in Bayesian model comparisons.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the economic impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) by studying foreign firms? choice of whether to issue bonds in the U.S. public bond market or elsewhere before and after the law's enactment in 2002. After controlling for firm characteristics, bond features, home-country attributes, and market conditions, I find that foreign firms rely less on the U.S. public bond market after SOX. Additionally, some determinants of choosing the U.S. public bond market have changed since the passage of SOX: firms listing equities on U.S. stock exchanges, adopting International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), and doing large bond issuances are more likely to choose this market in the post-SOX period than in the pre-SOX period. Overall, these results are consistent with a shift in the expected costs and benefits of choosing the U.S. public bond market following SOX. This paper provides the first evidence about how SOX influences debt financing decisions and alters capital flows across international bond markets.

In view of the increasing coronavirus death toll around the globe, centralized governments have been put under the spotlight to account for the deaths in the sovereign states they represent. But could it be a problem if we simply hold governments accountable for deaths by demanding accurate and transparent accounting of the total? Is there a better way to account for deaths in a pandemic without ignoring the pathos of loss and undermining our capacity to act spontaneously? I engage with these questions by looking at how the ethics/politics of death, as two sides of the same coin, affect our understanding of accountability in the time of COVID-19. I distinguish between two types of accountability that correspond to the two meanings of “account for”: “to explain the reason or the cause of something” and “to form part of a total” (Cambridge Dictionary1). The second type of accountability, informed by a Deleuzian ethics of death, is explored through an interpretative case study of accounting for the deaths in Wuhan, where the global pandemic began. It shows that accountability is essentially a freedom-enabled endeavour to account for deaths through our repetition in mourning, which forms part of honouring the dead, the dying and the living. This new configuration implies that a more radical form of accounting is needed in order to appreciate the value of life and be mindful of the socio-psychological costs associated with deaths.