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Accounting researchers have performed many studies related to public sector budgeting and financial management. Public sector accounting research seeks to explain the role of accounting and auditing in the public sector. For example, researchers examine issues such as (1) the use of accounting information by elected officials, (2) the demand for auditing, and (3) the determination of bond ratings. This review of the public sector accounting literature describes some of the theoretical foundations utilized in public sector accounting research and reviews a sample of selected empirical studies.

The desirability of financial reform to avoid another financial melt‐down is widely accepted, but the likelihood of reform is uncertain. The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of evolution and reform attempts at US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and provides an instructive model of the likely long‐term success of attempts to reform the financial system.

A model of the legislative and regulatory change process is first developed, considering the range of influences that arise. The history of reform attempts for US government sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are examined in the context of this model.

The model predicts that reform will often be thwarted. US government sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped fuel the housing bubble and required a government bail‐out. Sentiment for reform was high, but what happened next was – nothing. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a long history of successful lobbying, and they succeeded again. They did not need to stop legislation. They needed only to see it delayed long enough for attention to turn elsewhere. Five years after the bubble broke, their market dominance and the implied guarantees continue. Reform is not on the legislative agenda. This outcome does not bode well for financial market reform or stability.

An understanding of the process, influences, and likelihood of reform is important for governments, businesses, and individuals. While the picture this paper paints is not optimistic, it is important.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the legislative process, in order to determine the likely effectiveness of financial reform efforts in the USA.

Case study of the legislative process, particularly the less visible parts such as rule making, that shaped the passage and implementation of the Dodd‐Frank Act and the failed Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) reform.

It is found that the process of financial reform legislation is structured in such a way as to thwart major reform, at least in the short run.

The passage of a particular piece of legislation may be the least important element in the process of reform. Rule making and the decisions as to how a law will be implemented, can advance or significantly defeat the quest for change.

Much of what occurs in the legislative process is invisible, or appears arcane, to the ordinary citizen but can have major impact on their lives.

The paper provides a road map to understanding the least visible parts of financial reform efforts and suggests ways of achieving reform outcomes.

While the “Information Age” has provided the technological tools to “democratize” data and make it widely available to a vast audience of knowledge consumers, ironically it has also provided the materials for a tapestry of rules, regulations and processes that make it more difficult for individuals to access information relevant to both their public and private lives. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of the private sector in the control and policing of financial crime, and provide an empirical and theoretical framework for understanding the complex tensions created by the simultaneous expansion of both data sources and technologies to collect and format data to create marketable information “products.”

Three primary methods were used to gather the data for this research. Extensive literature reviews were conducted together with an analysis of existing data bases. Finally, a number of interviews were done with various corporate managers to ascertain their views of the existing climate of regulation and/or to determine their approach to monitoring financial crime.

Regarding the private sector's role in the control of financial crime, this research found five distinct roles; each with its own dynamics and implications for successful suppression of unlawful conduct. The five roles are grudging informant, enthusiastic intelligence operative, agent provocateur, cop on the take, and officer friendly. A calculus of incentives and disincentives determines which role will be adopted by the private sector.

Since this paper was exploratory in nature, resulting in a new taxonomy of compliance types, more in depth research ascertaining the empirical validity of each type would be in order. Such knowledge can help policy makers formulate rules and regulations that will enhance public/private partnerships in the control of financial crime.

Considers the factors affecting chief officers’ (CEOs’) compensation risk and control, develops hypotheses on the relationship between the two and tests them on data from a sample of Fortune 500/Fortune Service 500 companies from 1984 to 1989. Describes the characteristics of the sample and confirms that the relationship between compensation risk and CEO control (measured by board stock ownership/control) is piece‐wise linear. Shows that CEOs in larger firms are likely to have low control (under 8.25 per cent board stock holdings) and higher salaries; while those in the middle control range (8.25 per cent to 23.75 per cent) have the highest proportion of stock‐based compensation and golden parachutes; and those in the high control range have the lowest proportion of both stock‐based compensation and golden parachutes. Compares the results with other research findings and supports the ideas of Morck, Shleifer and Vishny (1988) that equity values decline in the middle range of control because of management entrenchment. Concludes that above a certain threshold of control CEOs can manage their compensation risk by including golden parachutes in their contracts even though this may cause negative returns for shareholders.

THE first library in connection with an English University was founded at Oxford by Richard d'Aungerville, better known as Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham. At the time of its foundation it was considered one of the best collections of books in England. It was housed in Durham College—now Trinity—and the donor drew up copious rules for its management and preservation. It appears that this library was destroyed in the days of Edward VI.

As a result of scandals concerning major financial crime in the early twenty‐first century, including accounting and auditing fraud and inappropriate behavior by directors on the boards of US corporations, Congress hurriedly enacted the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) in 2002. SOX's major purpose was to restore investor confidence in America's securities markets. Small firms argued that their cost of compliance was very heavy and that their burden was greater than for larger firms, especially the costs related to section 404 of the Act, which dealt with new requirements to obtain independent audit opinions. The authors found no empirical research that supports or denies these claims. Subsequently, in 2007, the Securities and Exchange Commission reduced the Act's new audit requirements for small companies. This paper aims to examine audit fees for large and small firms.

The study examines actual audit fee data to investigate the increased costs paid by publicly traded companies to independent audit firms for their services due to Sarbanes‐Oxley. The authors use univariate and multivariate statistical methods to compare increases in audit fees paid by samples of 150 large firms and 150 small firms.

The study finds that both small and large firms incurred increased audit fees due to compliance with Sarbanes‐Oxley, and that small companies did incur larger increases in their cost burden.

The study uses actual audit fee data reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission and controls for other factors that determine audit fees in reaching its conclusions.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge Cold War binaries, seeking a more nuanced understanding of popular experience of change in the Soviet Union’s last decades. This was a period of intensive modernization and rapid transformation in Soviet citizens’ everyday material environment, marked by the mass move to newly constructed housing and by changing relations with goods.

To probe popular experience and changing meanings, the paper turns to qualitative, subjective sources, drawing on oral history interviews (Everyday Aesthetics in the Modern Soviet Flat, 2004-2007).

The paper finds that qualitative changes took place in Soviet popular consumer culture during the 1960s-1970s, as millions of people made home in new housing amid the widespread media circulation of authoritative images representing a desirable modern lifestyle and modernist aesthetic. Soviet people began to make aesthetic or semiotic distinctions between functionally identical goods and were concerned to find the right furniture to fit a desired lifestyle, aesthetic ideal and sense of self.

The problem is how to conceptualize the trajectory of change in ways that do justice to historical subjects’ experience and narratives, while avoiding uncritically reproducing Cold War binaries or perpetuating the normative status claimed by the postwar West in defining modernity and consumer culture.

The paper challenges dominant Cold War narratives, according to which Soviet popular relations with goods were encompassed by shortage and necessity. It advances understanding of the specific form of modern consumer culture, which, it argues, took shape in the USSR after Stalin.

The history of the Encyclopaedia Britannica from its inauguration in 1768 up to the ninth edition of 1888 is described. Its origins in Edinburgh during the Enlightenment are discussed and its early Edinburgh editors and contributors reviewed. Later editors and contributors and the gradual changing of the work are discussed. Its expansion from an Edinburgh to a global publication is also demonstrated.