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Volume 1 of Accounting History covers the first 10,000 plus years of the rise of accounting and civilization. Conveniently, accounting was part of the developing culture from the start. With fortified villages, accumulating wealth meant inventory accounting, first using tokens (clay balls) and eventually writing plus the abstract concepts of numbers. Cultures evolved in Mesopotamia and elsewhere. After the Crusades, Italian city-states created merchant wealth based on the creation of double-entry. Luca Pacioli’s Summa described the Venetian system, which traveled north thanks to Gutenberg’s printing press. Enhanced forms of manufacturing, banking, and merchant trade continued. England proved to be a special place, where the Industrial Revolution was born. Along the way, accounting sophistication rose as entrepreneurs discovered the need for complex information to survive. Accounting became a profession as business became big and important enough to employ professionals. The United States went from an agrarian backwater to an industrial power in 100 years. Accounting sophistication matched business complexity, as manufacturing accounting and control techniques developed capable of providing information needed to run giant firms. Railroads became big, requiring complex accounting system. Andrew Carnegie used his railroad experience to adapt the railroad accounting systems to steel manufacturing. Industries consolidated and the need for effective accounting control became imperative. Du Pont proved to be the most effective innovator and this knowledge expanded at General Motors, systems that dominated beyond the mid-20th century. Accounting History is written for accounting and business students plus business professionals. It’s not written for accounting historians, although they may find this book useful. The writing is basic without much jargon, so the general public will also find this book insightful.
Accounting history continues in Volume 2 with six chapters, four supplements, plus conclusions. Chapters 1 to 3 of the second volume cover specialty topics, specifically auditing, taxes, and government accounting. Chapters 4 to 6 march along from the New Deal to beyond the mortgage meltdown and Great Recession. Supplements include audit opinions (the audit reports written for the annual financial audits), the scandals and corruption associated with accounting fraud, the formal standard setting process creating generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), and finally computer technology, a key component of the accounting profession—and civilization. The concept of accounting as a profession developed by the 19th century, as accounting-related services (bankruptcy, taxes, and auditing) became important enough to hire experts and separate businesses to support these functions. Soon, licensing was required. Auditing and tax proved to be major money-makers for accountants. Accounting firms became mammoth and global (especially the Big 4) providing audit, tax and consulting services to giant multinational corporations as well as smaller business, governments, nonprofits organizations, and individuals. The rest of the book covers accounting since the early 20th century, when accounting became increasingly sophisticated and important to the commercial and political worlds. The 1920 reverted to “free markets,” financial market manipulation and speculation, fueled by abundant credit precipitating a boom; then the Great Depression, followed by FDR’s New Deal. Chapter 5 covers most of the post-World War II period. Chapter 6 covers the bubbles and busts of the late-20th century and beyond, with particular attention to Enron. Conclusions summarize the last 10,000 years of accounting, its overall impact on civilization, and predictions for the future.
Accounting is often referred to as the language of business. Unfortunately, many business professionals lack the required fluency in this unique language to perform basic financial analysis, prepare budgetary forecasts, or to compare competing capital investment alternatives. This book targets individuals with limited exposure to—or formal training in—accounting and related finance disciplines. These individuals include—but certainly are not limited to—engineers, information technology specialists, retail managers, entrepreneurs, marketing directors, construction contractors, attorneys, and bankers who are making career transitions from consumer lending positions to become commercial loan officers. The primary purpose of this book is to help managers and business owners from diverse professional and educational backgrounds to (1) converse more effectively with their accounting and finance colleagues; (2) understand the structure and the elements of general purpose financial statements; (3) identify both the usefulness and the limitations of accounting information; (4) prepare budgets and financial forecasts; and (5) make sense of commonly used decision-making models.
The author contextualized the phenomenon of accounting fraud using a framework he developed called “Corporate Governance Cosmos.” The book contains an extensive literature review including an evaluation of the seminal theory in this area, namely, the Fraud Triangle. There is a comprehensive exploration of the motivations for accounting fraud and a growing realization that Dark Triad (psychopathy, narcissism, and machiavellianism) tendencies may explain why executives engage in accounting fraud. The author expands an established framework entitled Cooks Recipes Incentives Monitoring End results (C R I M E) by Rezaee (2005), to ‘’C R I M E L’’, where L is the “Learning” from 33 international case studies of accounting fraud. Accountants, auditors, antifraud practitioners, and graduate students will find the case studies of accounting fraud particularly useful as it makes the phenomenon tangible and more understandable. The penultimate chapter is a study of the likely impact of financial technology on accounting fraud. The author concludes by marshalling various insights including a brief discussion of ethics, forwarding his International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants (IFAC) ‘‘Ethical Triangle’’, his vision for the future accountant, which he refers to as ‘’accounting engineers’’, and an ancient prescription for the curse of accounting fraud.
The first edition of this book explained the efforts of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to develop accounting regulations to be used worldwide. In 2002, progress was accelerated by the decision of Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in the United States to converge their regulations with international standards. This second edition describes the successes and failures of the convergence project. The U.S. involvement brought about many changes in corporate financial reporting, but there were differences in opinions on specific issues. This resulted in the FASB, US focusing on its own regulations. We explain the main convergence achievements and also the differences leading to the end of the project. Our analysis reviews new developments in corporate reporting, including the issues of sustainability, governance, and integrated reporting.
Corporate governance has evolved as a central issue for public companies in the aftermath of the 2007–2009 global financial crisis. Corporate governance is a process (journey) of managing corporate affairs to create shareholder value and protect interests of other stakeholders. This book presents a road map for various functions and measures of corporate governance. The participants in the corporate governance process are the board of directors, executives, stakeholders, internal and external auditors, financial analysts, legal counsel, and regulators. This book is organized into four separate volumes; each volume can be utilized separately or in an integrated form. The first volume consists of five chapters that address the relevance and importance of corporate governance as well as the framework and structure of corporate governance. The second volume consists of four chapters that present the three prevailing corporate governance functions of oversight, management, and monitoring. The third volume consists of four chapters that address corporate governance functions performed by corporate gatekeepers, including policy makers, regulators, standard-setters, internal auditors, external auditors, legal counsel, and financial advisors. The fourth volume consists of five chapters that address the emerging issues in corporate governance, including governance for private companies and nonprofit organizations and convergence in global corporate governance.
Corporate governance has evolved as a central issue for public companies in the aftermath of the 2007–2009 global financial crisis. Corporate governance is a process (journey) of managing corporate affairs to create shareholder value and protect interests of other stakeholders. This book presents a road map for various functions and measures of corporate governance. The participants in the corporate governance process are the board of directors, executives, stakeholders, internal and external auditors, financial analysts, legal counsel, and regulators. This book is organized into four separate volumes; each volume can be utilized separately or in an integrated form. The first volume consists of five chapters that address the relevance and importance of corporate governance as well as the framework and structure of corporate governance. The second volume consists of four chapters that present the three prevailing corporate governance functions of oversight, management, and monitoring. The third volume consists of four chapters that address corporate governance functions performed by corporate gatekeepers, including policy makers, regulators, standard-setters, internal auditors, external auditors, legal counsel, and financial advisors. The fourth volume consists of five chapters that address the emerging issues in corporate governance, including governance for private companies and nonprofit organizations and convergence in global corporate governance.
Blockchains are the distributed ledger technology that powers Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But blockchains can be used for more than the transfer of tokens – they are a significant new economic infrastructure. This book offers the first scholarly analysis of the economic nature of blockchains and the shape of the blockchain economy. By applying the institutional economics of Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson, this book shows how blockchains are poised to reshape the nature of firms, governments, markets, and civil society.
A “brilliant” (Los Angeles Review of Books) history of accounting, showing how financial and political accountability has shaped the rise and fall of nations and empires Whether building a road or fighting a war, leaders from ancient Mesopotamia to the present have relied on financial accounting to track their state's assets and guide its policies. Basic accounting tools such as auditing and double-entry bookkeeping form the basis of modern capitalism and the nation-state. Yet our appreciation for accounting and its formative role throughout history remains minimal at best-and we remain ignorant at our peril. Poor or risky practices can shake, and even bring down, entire societies. In The Reckoning, historian and MacArthur "Genius" Award-winner Jacob Soll presents a sweeping history of accounting, drawing on a wealth of examples from over a millennia of human history to reveal how accounting has shaped kingdoms, empires, and entire civilizations. The Medici family of 15th century Florence used the double-entry method to win the loyalty of their clients, but eventually began to misrepresent their accounts, ultimately contributing to the economic decline of the Florentine state itself. In the 17th and 18th centuries, European rulers shunned honest accounting, understanding that accurate bookkeeping would constrain their spending and throw their legitimacy into question. And in fact, when King Louis XVI's director of finances published the crown's accounts in 1781, his revelations provoked a public outcry that helped to fuel the French Revolution. When transparent accounting finally took hold in the 19th Century, the practice helped England establish a global empire. But both inept and willfully misused accounting persist, as the catastrophic Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2008 have made all too clear. A masterwork of economic and political history, and a radically new perspective on the recent past, The Reckoning compels us to see how accounting is an essential instrument of great institutions and nations-and one that, in our increasingly transparent and interconnected world, has never been more vital.