This article provides the beginnings of a positive theory of accounting by exploring those factors influencing management's attitudes on accounting standards which are likely to affect corporate lobbying on accounting standards. Certain factors are expected to affect a firm's cashflows and in turn are affected by accounting standards. These factors are taxes, regulation, management compensation plans, bookkeeping costs, and political costs, and they are combined into a model which predicts that large firms which experience reduced earnings due to changed accounting standards favor the change. All other firms oppose the change if the additional bookkeeping costs justify the cost of lobbying. This prediction was tested using the corporate submissions to the FASB's Discussion Memorandum on General Price Level Adjustments. The empirical results are consistent with the theory.

Richard W. Leftwich, Ross L. Watts, Jerold L. Zimmerman, Voluntary Corporate Disclosure: The Case of Interim Reporting, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 19, Studies on Standardization of Accounting Practices: An Assessment of Alternative Institutional Arrangements (1981), pp. 50-77

The papers in this volume and briefly summarized in this introduction document that: (1) executive compensation is positively related to share price performance: (2) poor firm performance is associated with increased executive turnover; (3) managers choose accounting accruals in ways that increase the value of their bonus awards; (4) the adoption of new short- and long-term executive compensation plans and golden parachutes are associated with positive share price reactions; (5) the death of a firm's founder is associated with positive share price reactions; and (6) managers are less likely to make merger bids that lower their stock prices when they hold more stock in their firm. These findings are interpreted as generally supporting the view that executive compensation packages help align managers' and shareholders' interests.

We suggest that economics can complement traditional ethics discussions with the respect to at least three basic points. First, economics provides a theory of how individuals make choices; including choices that have potential ethical dimensions. Second business ethics and the internal structure of the organization are inextricably linked they establish important incentives for those individuals who compose the firm. Third, a company's reputation for ethical behavior is part of its brand-name capital. As such, it is reflected in the value of its securities.

We document that CEO cash compensation is twice as sensitive to negative stock returns as it is to positive stock returns. Since stock returns include both unrealized gains and unrealized losses, we expect cash compensation to be less sensitive to stock returns when returns contain unrealized gains (positive returns) than when returns contain unrealized losses (negative returns). This is consistent with boards of directors exercising discretion to reduce costly ex post settling up in cash compensation paid to CEOs.