Accounting
What Is Accounting For?
Prof. Rick Antle explains how accounting serves as the infrastructure for the smooth functioning of society.
Contrary to Conventional Wisdom, Margins Don’t Rise as a Company Grows
Nearly every business plan contains the assumption that as the company grows, its average costs will fall and profit margins will rise. But that isn’t borne out by the numbers.
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Keeping a Close Eye on Local Governments’ Finances Can Improve How they Govern
Yale SOM’s Anya Nakhmurina found that fiscal monitoring policies, which require a state office to review local governments’ finances, boosted municipalities’ financial health and reduced corruption convictions of local officials.
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For CEOs, Integrity Is the Best Policy
A new study co-authored by Yale SOM’s Thomas Steffen analyzed tens of thousands of shareholder letters to reveal whether executives’ actions typically live up to their promises. It found that firms whose CEOs scored well on this measure of integrity tended to perform better, while facing lower audit fees.![An illustration of a CEO writing a letter with a portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the wall]()
Three Questions: Is This the End of Sears?
After decades of decline, Sears filed for bankruptcy in October. Yale Insights asked bankruptcy expert Stanley Garstka what would remain of the once-dominant retailer and its heritage at the end of the process.![A Sears retail store in Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1981. Photo: Library of Congress.]()
Three Questions: Prof. Rick Antle on Lowering Corporate Taxes
As the Republicans’ $1.5 trillion tax package trundles toward a vote in the Senate, we asked Rick Antle, an expert in financial accounting and corporate governance, on how the corporate tax system could be improved.Where Did Madoff's Money Go?
Yale SOM’s Rick Antle on the complexities of making restitution in the wake of a Ponzi scheme.
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Can better accounting avert a pension crisis?
State and local governments are sitting on more than $1 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities. Updated accounting rules will require state and local governments to begin reporting their pension liabilities in a format more closely resembling for-profit accounting. Will clearer accounting contribute to a solution of the under-funding crisis?No accounting for turbulent times?
Responding to Q4's conversation "Did innovation cause the credit crisis?" Rick Antle, William S. Beinecke Professor of Accounting at Yale SOM, puts accounting changes and their role in the current financial turmoil in context.What's the cost of changing accounting models?
With notable prescience, Shyam Sunder, the James L. Frank Professor of Accounting, Economics, and Finance at Yale SOM co-authored an editorial in the Financial Times with Stella Fearnley of Bournemouth University on August 23, 2007, warning of dangers from converging accounting models.What happened to the accounting profession?
For most of the twentieth century, accountants were organized into a self-governing profession, but that structure has been shaken over the last decade by a wave of scandals. Yale SOM professors Rick Antle and Shyam Sunder discuss the implications for management of accounting’s successes and failures as a profession.
