ACCOUNTING STANDARD SETTING PROCESS

Quality of corporate financial reporting potentially rises if standard accounting rules/principles are of high quality and compliance to them is strongly enforced. But the book reveals immediate problem of political intervention facing market economies, their investors and creditors. It elaborates the forms and timings of lobbying; presents 47 cases of intervention [1960s-2005] involving 12 national standard setters and the global standard setter; classifies the motivating factors for political lobbying; describes the effect of intervention that depended mainly upon form of financial reporting, affected transparency and flexibility of standard setting. This situation calls for measures to reduce the depressing outcome of politicization on accounting and the book sets safeguards to the interveners'' activities from economic consequences, conceptual framework and due process considerations in standard setting.. This study should help standard setters, securities regulators, serious researchers on accounting and students at large to understand how interveners make such interpretations.