Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/230177 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Citation: 
[Journal:] Journal of Accounting Research [ISSN:] 1475-679X [Volume:] 58 [Issue:] 3 [Publisher:] Wiley [Place:] Hoboken, NJ [Year:] 2020 [Pages:] 589-642
Publisher: 
Wiley, Hoboken, NJ
Abstract: 
Politicians frequently intervene in the regulation of financial accounting. Evidence from the accounting literature shows that regulatory capture by special interests helps explain these interventions. However, many accounting rules have broad economic or social consequences, such as their effects on income distribution or private sector subsidies. The perception of these consequences varies with a politician's ideology. Therefore, if accounting rules produce those consequences, ideology plausibly spills over and explains a politician's stance on the technical accounting issue, beyond special interest pressure. We use two prominent U.S. political debates about fair value accounting and the expensing of employee stock options to disentangle the role of ideology from special interest pressure. In both debates, ideology explains politicians’ involvement at exactly those points when the debate focuses on the economic consequences of accounting regulation (i.e., bank bailouts and top management compensation). Once the debates focus on more technical issues, connections to special interests remain the dominant force.
Subjects: 
G01
G28
K22
L51
M40
M41
M48
P16
accounting regulation
fair value
financial crisis
ideology
political economy
accounting standard setting
stock option expensing
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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