Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-16-2018
Abstract
I explore whether the level of ideological diversity among Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) members has declined since the emergence of their conceptual framework. I analyze votes made by FASB members on Statements of Financial Accounting Standards and compare them to comment letters submitted by constituent sponsoring organizations. I demonstrate that, relative to the Pre-CF regime (1973–1986), FASB members’ voting positions in the CF regime (1987–2007) are (i) less like their constituent sponsors and (ii) more like one another. The former result is primarily attributable to differences between FASB members with auditor and preparer backgrounds and those groups’ sponsors. Both of these shifts are associated with standards increasing accounting relevance; in the CF regime, standards that increase relevance likely do so because of the framework’s broad focus on decision usefulness. I document a significant increase in sponsors’ dissent in the CF regime, and regression analysis indicates that variation in standards’ authoritative references to the conceptual framework accounts for all of this increase. Lastly, from 1996–2007, all but one dissenting vote by FASB members on fair value standards explicitly argues for an even greater use of fair values, while none argue for less use. To the extent FASB members’ individual ideologies influence their voting positions, the evidence is consistent with a decline in the level of ideological diversity among FASB members in the CF regime.
Recommended Citation
Chakravarthy, J. (2018). Ideological diversity in standard setting. Review of Accounting Studies. doi: 10.1007/s11142-018-9478-7
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
Springer
Included in
Accounting Commons, Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons, Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons, Other Business Commons
Comments
This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Review of Accounting Studies in 2018 following peer review. The final publication is available at Springer via DOI: 10.1007/s11142-018-9478-7.