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Abstract
Eduard Braun's paper entitled "The Ecological Rationality of Historical Costs and Conservatism" has many elements which recommend it. Professor Braun has done an excellent job of summarizing several key topics in accounting theory, in particular those related to the issue of the revenue-expense versus the asset-liability approach to income determination and the historical cost versus fair value debate. In his paper, Braun argues that the revenue-expense approach to accounting cannot be traced to a distinct event. He also maintains that the revenue-expense approach is ecologically rational; that is, it results from "social evolution", not human design. He goes on to argue that this ecological rationality is the reason why the efforts to impose the asset-liability approach favored by accounting standard-setters has encountered difficulties. He further argues that a solid basis for explaining the ecological rationality of the revenue-expense approach can be found in behavioral economics especially in Prospect Theory. He concludes that the revenue-expense approach is ecological rational and that it provides a basis for the organization of a market economy. The author supports his arguments with citations to well-respected accounting research which provides arguments against abandoning the revenue-expense approach (Waymire & Basu, 2007, Accounting is an evolved economic institution. Foundations and Trends in Accounting, 2(1–2), 1–173; Dickhaut, Basu, McCabe, & Waymire, 2009, Neuroaccounting II: Consilience between accounting principles and the primate brain. Retrieved January 30, 2009 from http://ssrn.com/abstract=1336517 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1336517; Dickhaut, 2009, The brain as the original accounting institution. The Accounting Review, 84(6), 1703–1712). This commentary will focus on two themes in Braun's paper. First, the question of ecological rationality and whether this concept implies evolutionary progress. Second, the historical evolution of the revenue-expense approach, and why this approach can traced to several distinct events.

ABSTRACTDuring the first half of the 20th century, "accounting theory" developed primarily by accounting scholars and academics provided the primary basis for the practice and teaching of financial accounting in the United States. Since the creation of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in the early 1970s, the FASB Conceptual Framework has provided the primary basis for accounting standards-setting, as well as for the practice and teaching of financial accounting. While the purpose of creating a Conceptual Framework has been to develop an agreed-upon set of concepts and principles to guide accounting standards-setting, a related goal has been to reduce diversity in accounting practice and to move toward greater uniformity. This paper traces the influence of accounting theory on the Conceptual Framework and explores some of the consequences of this influence.

International audience ; While it is now evident that a global accounting profession has evolved in response to the growth of global capitalism, an historical survey of the evolution of the accounting profession suggests that the evolution of the accounting profession has not been smooth or constant, and that the State has played a significant role in this evolution. The legal requirement for external audits of company financial statements, which found its inception in the mid-19th century, provided an opportunity for the growth of a global accounting profession, but economic competition among nation states and frequent military conflict during the 19th and 20th centuries inhibited the creation of a truly global profession. Moreover, the ways in which the profession emerged and evolved through time have differed in different countries, and it is only during recent periods that there have been significant efforts to harmonize the regulatory structures for the profession in different countries. A comparative historical survey of the evolution of the accounting profession in several major countries constitutes the primary focus of this paper. ; Tandis qu'il est maintenant évident qu'une profession comptable globale évoluait en réponse à la croissance du capitalisme global, une étude historique de l'évolution de la profession comptable suggèrerait que l'évolution de la profession n'était pas lisse ou constante, et que l'état jouait un rôle significatif dans cette évolution. Si le statut légal en ce qui concerne les audits externe des comptes annuels, qui ont trouvé son début au mi 19ème siècle, a présenté une occasion pour la croissance d'une profession globale, la concurrence économique parmi les nations et les conflits militaires pendant le 19ème et les 20èmes siècles empêchaient la création d'une profession comptable véritablement globale. D'ailleurs, les façons dont la profession émergeait et évoluait par le temps ont différé dans différents pays, et c'est seulement pendant des ...

The essay concerns the manner private power threatens the proper democratic role of the press or mass media. But first, Part I examines two preliminary conceptual matters involved in locating this discussion in the context of a conference on private power as a threat to human rights: 1) the relation of human rights to private power in general. This relation is complicated due to fact that human rights can themselves be seen as the assertion of private power against government or against collective power while, depending on how conceptualized, human rights can be improperly threatened by private power even while private power operates in a generally lawful manner; 2) involves the relation of press freedom and human rights. Here I argue that human rights are ill-conceived if offered as embodying any particular right in respect to the press—more specifically, I argue that a free press is not a human right—but argue instead that an ideal media order that is embodied in a broad conception of free press provides the soil in which human rights can flourish and the armor that offers them protection. Both government power and private power are necessary for and constitute threats to these supportive roles of a free press.Political-legal theory—or in constitutional democracies, possibly constitutional theory—should offer some guide to how the tightrope between government as threat and government as source of protection against private threats ought to be walked. That is, the goal is to find both proper limits on government power and proper empowerment of government to respond to private threats. Part II examines the variety of private threats to the proper role of the press. It focuses on two forms of threats: first, market failures that can be expected in relatively normal functioning of the market; second, problems related to the purposeful use of concentrated economic power. Responsive policies are multiple—no magic bullet but varying different governmental (as well as private) responses are appropriate. However, Part III illustrates this point by considering only two types of governmental policies, both of which I have recently been involved in advocating: first, government promotion of dispersal of concentrated power by means of ownership rules and policies; second, tax subsidies in the form of tax credits for a significant portion of journalists salaries as a means to correct for underproduction of journalism on theory that this journalism generally produces significant positive externalities.

While the topic of globalisation has been widely discussed in both the academic and popular literatures, there has also been a growing body of work in the accounting literature which has analyzed the challenges and problems posed by globalisation. Many of these articles have been critical of the neo-liberal policies that have resulted in adverse consequences for people living in less developed countries; in particular, the policies and practices of transnational organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. This paper addresses the topic of globalisation from a somewhat different perspective. We employ a theoretical and methodological framework adapted from Jürgen Habermas to formulate certain constative statements about the topic of globalisation. This effort is seen as a first step towards developing a better understanding about globalisation.

Although the overall investment in information technology (IT) decreased during the first few years of the 21st century, B2B e-commerce continued to expand at a rapid rate (Lim & Wen, 2002). The expansion of B2B e-commerce has been based to a large extent on accounting and enterprise-wide information systems (EISs) that permit electronic data transmission and execution of transactions in an effective and efficient manner. Since B2B e-commerce is Internet based, the EISs required to support B2B e-commerce must be Internet capable. The primary language of the Internet, Hyper-text Mark-up Language (HTML), is not well-suited for transmitting data and executing transactions. Consequently, Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) was developed to facilitate a wide range of electronic information exchange applications, including many applications related to B2B e-commerce. XML also allows legacy data to be accessed through the Internet. As initially conceived, XML had a number of constraints, particularly in the area of data integrity and security; however, these constraints are being overcome. This article discusses the objectives of using XML in B2B e-commerce, reviews the technical structure of XML, and discusses ways that data integrity can be maintained and security enhanced while engaging in B2B e-commerce.

My thesis is simple. The right of informational privacy, the great
modern achievement often attributed to the classic Samuel Warren and
Louis Brandeis article, "The Right to Privacy" (1890),
asserts an individual's right not to have private personal
information circulated. Warren and Brandeis claimed that individual
dignity in a modern society requires that people be able to keep their
private lives to themselves and proposed that the common law should be
understood to protect this dignity by making dissemination of private
information a tort. As broadly stated, this right not to have private
information distributed directly conflicts with a broadly conceived
freedom of speech and of the press. My claim is that, in cases of
conflict, the law should reject the Warren and Brandeis innovation.
Speech and press freedom should prevail; the privacy tort should be
ignored. This conclusion requires a normative argument concerning the
appropriate basis and status of speech freedom that this essay will not
really provide but for which I have argued elsewhere. Here, instead, I
will describe that theory of speech freedom, explore its implications
for informational privacy, and finally suggest some reasons to think
that rejection of the privacy tort should not be so troubling and is,
in fact, pragmatically desirable.

Baker reviews 'Welfare in America: Christian Perspectives on a Policy in Crisis' edited by Stanley W. Carlson-Thies and James W. Skillen.