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Accounting reform is an expansion to accounting rules that goes beyond the realm of financial measures for both individual economic entities and national economies. It is advocated by those who consider the focus of the present standards and practices wholly inadequate to the task of measuring and reporting the activity, success, and failure of modern enterprise, including government. The basic bookkeeping concepts underlying contemporary accounting date back about 500 years to Renaissance Italian practices. Obviously, the vast majority of articulations by modern standard setters have little in common with the accounting practices then used. Real debate concerns concepts such as whether to report transactions, such as asset acquisitions, at their cost or to report them at their current market values. The former, traditional approach, appeals for its reliability but can quickly lose its relevance due to inflation and other factors; the latter, increasingly common approach, appeals for its relevance but may be less reliable due to its resort to appraisals or other subjective measures. This trade off is essentially impossible to overcome. The relative virtue of either approach depends on the subject matter in question. It has been suggested that Accounting scholarship be merged into this article or section. ...
Business Limited reforms within professional management circles have led in the past to activity-based costing, economic value added, regret and risk measures. The term management characterizes the process of and/or the personnel leading and directing all or part of an organization (often a business) through the deployment and manipulation of resources (human, financial, material, intellectual or intangible). ...
Economic Value Added (EVA) is often defined as the value of an activity that is left over after subtracting from it the cost of executing that activity and the cost of having lost the opportunity of investing consumed resources in an alternative activity. ...
For other uses, see Risk (disambiguation). ...
Not only do most businesses raise capital based on numbers derived from current standards, there are extensive lobbying efforts by the accounting industry to keep those standards roughly as they are: complex, loopholed, and unable to be applied or audited easily by laymen.
Heads of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since the 1980s have consistently complained that this lobbying makes it impossible for them to apply meaningful reform, even in the wake of accounting scandals, e.g. that which felled Arthur Andersen in 2002. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, commonly referred to as the SEC, is the United States governing body which has primary responsibility for overseeing the regulation of the securities industry. ...
Accounting scandals, or corporate accounting scandals are political and business scandals which arise with the disclosure of misdeeds by trusted executives of large public corporations. ...
This article or section seems not to be written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia entry. ...
For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ...
National economies Any comprehensive scheme of accounting reform is a major professional and academic enterprise; Typically it requires examination of the role of each of the fundamental factors of production, an analysis of capital indicating how many types there are and how each supports each factor of a production process. Factors of production are resources used in the production of goods and services in economics. ...
Capital has a number of related meanings in economics, finance and accounting. ...
A comprehensive scheme that would affect, for instance, the United Nations standards for national accounts, the rules of the Bank for International Settlements, or listing requirements on the major stock exchanges, would have to defend any change against critics that advocated lesser reforms - making it extraordinarily difficult to achieve simultaneous consent. Measures of national income and output are used in economics to estimate the value of goods and services produced in an economy. ...
BIS Headquarters in Basel The Bank for International Settlements (or BIS) is an international organization of central banks which exists to foster cooperation among central banks and other agencies in pursuit of monetary and financial stability. It carries out its work through subcommittees, the secretariats it hosts, and through its...
A stock exchange is a corporation or mutual organization which provides the facilities for stock brokers to trade company stocks and other securities. ...
Marilyn Waring, who deeply criticized the UN account system for systematically under-valuing the social and economic contributions of women, stated also that she had to read literally an entire room full of books in order even to understand the standards applied today. It seems unlikely that most advocates of reform have the stamina to do so, nor the background required to debate each issue with economists or accountants that build their careers on the detailed extension and improvement of standards that already exist. Most critics considered reform prospects bleak. Marilyn Waring (born 1952) is a renowned New Zealand feminist, an activist for female human rights, an author and an academic. ...
Face-to-face trading interactions on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities. ...
It has been suggested that Accounting scholarship be merged into this article or section. ...
The critique from ecological economics was even more fundamental, claiming that most means of measuring well-being indicated that the developed nations were in a state of "uneconomic growth" through the 1980s and 1990s, due mostly to failures of measurement, most or all of which could be tracked back to the practice of using the Gross National Product as a means of making money supply decisions. This is perhaps the most obvious and widely-held critique of current national accounting and economic growth reporting systems - the creators of the GNP and GDP measures themselves advise against its use as a single measure of economic growth - but politicians and press typically do so without caveat nor apology. Ecological economics is a branch of economics that addresses the interdependence and co-evolution between human economies and natural ecosystems. ...
The well-being or quality of life of a population is an important concern in economics and political science. ...
A developed country is a country that is technologically advanced and that enjoys a relatively high standard of living. ...
Uneconomic growth, in welfare economics, human development theory and some forms of ecological economics, is economic growth which reflects or creates a decline in human well-being. ...
Measures of national income and output are used in economics to estimate the value of goods and services produced in an economy. ...
The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...
Robert Costanza, Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and others who advocate a consistent global system for valuing natural capital, note that failures in this area are particularly grim: promoting extinction, loss of biodiversity, climate change and destructive weather for the sake of such "growth". John McMurtry characterized this as "the cancer stage of capitalism". Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and best-selling author. ...
Amory Lovins Amory Bloch Lovins (born November 13, 1947 in Washington, DC) was trained in physics and has worked professionally as an environmentalist. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
The Dodo, shown here in illustration, is an often-cited[1] example of extinction. ...
Rainforests are among the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth Biodiversity or biological diversity is the diversity of life. ...
Variations in CO2, temperature and dust from the Vostok ice core over the last 400,000 years Climate change refers to the variation in the Earths global climate or in regional climates over time. ...
Professor John McMurtry, FRSC is a moral philosopher and ethicist who works at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. ...
It has been suggested that Cancerous tumor be merged into this article or section. ...
For other uses, see Capitalism (disambiguation). ...
What makes "economic sense" under current standards, they argue, is in fact leading to ecological catastrophe, social conflict, and economic chaos.
Governments One barrier to accounting reform are governments themselves. They have the authority to determine what are accepted accounting principles, while using questionable accounting practices themselves. Governments, for example, pay off operating costs with longer-term debt and thus overstate budgetary surpluses or conceal operating deficits. This is not unlike the allegedly fraudulent practices of some corporations.
Notable advocates Notable advocates of accounting reform: Marilyn Waring (born 1952) is a renowned New Zealand feminist, an activist for female human rights, an author and an academic. ...
Amory Lovins Amory Bloch Lovins (born November 13, 1947 in Washington, DC) was trained in physics and has worked professionally as an environmentalist. ...
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