Philip Brown, along with Ray Ball and William Beaver, is one of the founding fathers of capital markets research in accounting. It is therefore very useful to have access to a collection of essays and re-published papers that document the intellectual and personal development of one of these important figures.Following an informative Foreword by Stephen Zeff, the series editor, the book lists the many papers and books published by Brown. There are about 90 items spanning the period 1967 to 2011, an average of roughly two items a year. Of these, Brown has published around 62 journal articles. The Introduction to the book nicely links the history of the academic outputs to the life and travels of the author. Young academics will be especially interested in this, as it will help them to think about how to plan their career as a whole, taking into account the demands of leadership and administration. It shows how accidents of history can have a big impact on your career, provided that you are smart enough to capitalize on them. It also shows how it is possible to be a successful author while making significant contributions to the more general, and often under-rewarded, aspects of academic life. It is also good to see that it is possible to return to serious research following a period of intense management activity, such as the setting up of the Australian Graduate School of Management. The importance of the considered use of sabbatical leave for self-development is also apparent.Brown's work straddles the areas of accounting, corporate governance, and finance. Among other things, his career shows why it does not make sense to attempt to separate off accounting from finance. Accounting academics have a lot to learn from finance, and finance ignores accounting at its peril (witness the Enron scandal, and the recent financial crisis).Part I focuses on the very important work which Brown launched along with Ray Ball on the relation between stock returns and earnings news. The landmark paper is Ball and Brown (1968). This paper established a remarkably robust research design for showing that annual positive and negative earnings surprises predict abnormal stock market returns. They show that, if you had known the earnings surprise at the start of the year, you could have made an abnormal return of around 16 percent by buying (shorting) the positive (negative) earnings surprise portfolio. The paper showed that earnings capture about 50 percent of the share price news relating to the firm during the year. However, it also shows that around 85 to 90 percent of the news is anticipated by the market in advance of its official public announcement. The remaining chapters of this part document the wide-ranging effects of this landmark paper on accounting research, focusing especially on the period up to 1989.Part II contains a mixture of papers mostly concerned with aspects of stock market efficiency. One paper, co-authored with Ball, looks at current cost accounting from an efficient markets point of view. The other papers examine themes that are also highly relevant today. One paper examines whether financial experts are able to beat the market, and finds that they are pretty good at picking losers, but not winners. This chimes with modern research that shows that short selling constraints can prevent bad news from getting into prices in a timely way. There is a chapter on the long-run under-performance of firms making SEOs (seasoned equity offerings), also a current research theme. Finally, there are Brown's early thoughts on reporting for financial instruments and fixed asset revaluations. The book does not contain Brown's work on market anomalies, though these are listed in the bibliography, including two co-authored papers published in the Journal of Financial Economics in 1983.Part III contains a selection of papers that reflect Brown's long-standing interest in policy relevant research. One paper studies how the introduction of new criminal and civil sanctions on the voluntary disclosures of ASX (Australian Stock Exchange) changed disclosure practices, and the impact of the these changes on the properties of analysts' earnings forecasts and share price anticipation of earnings. This paper nicely illustrates how combining a variety of research designs helps to provide a clearer picture of the overall effect of a policy initiative. The second paper in this part extends the methods of the first paper, to consider whether better governed firms produce more informative disclosures. This work has subsequently grown into a major international study of governance outcomes. A feature of this work is the investment that Brown and his co-authors have put in to devising measures of corporate governance quality that are reasonably comparable across jurisdictions.The remaining papers of Part III bring together Brown's contributions to research on accounting standard setting. These papers will be of interest to policy makers, and students of accounting outside the relatively narrow confines of market-based accounting research. A paper with Bryan Howieson, written in 1998, provides an insightful discussion of the limits and potential of capital markets research for informing accounting standard setting. This paper also highlights corporate regulation, international harmonization, research and development, goodwill accounting, and equity accounting as key areas where capital markets research can influence the thinking of standard setters. To this list one might add accounting conservatism and fair value accounting.A paper with Greg Clinch, published in 1998, anticipates many of the issues surrounding the widespread adoption of IFRS in the first decade of this century. It provides a useful overview of the literature on the reasons for accounting diversity, how capital markets cope with diversity, the potential implications of harmonization for small national stock markets, and the potential costs and benefits of harmonization for firms and investors. This paper provides a handy prequel to the large body of empirical literature that has emerged since IFRS were more widely introduced.The widespread adoption of IFRS during the period 2001 to 2008, and especially EU adoption in 2005, has given rise to a large empirical literature aimed at identifying the realized costs and benefits of IFRS. Brown wrote a timely and instructive overview of this literature for the ICAEW'S 2010 Information for Better Markets Conference in 2010 (Brown 2011). Brown's conclusion was that the literature broadly indicates positive net benefits for a range of capital market indicators, though the results depend on the stage of development of the adopting country (especially where its own standards are weak and poorly understood internationally), the quality of enforcement at national level, the general quality of firm level corporate governance, and the incentives firms face to generate high quality accounting information.Accounting standard setting is a highly political process involving multiple interest groups, including regulatory bodies (often competing against each other for influence), politicians, companies, and users of the financial statements and the other disclosures required by accounting standards. A paper by Brown and Ann Tarca that appeared in Abacus in 2001 analyzes a regulatory episode that occurred in 1997 in Australia. The Corporate Law Economic Reform Program proposed the adoption of International Accounting Standards (IAS) by 1999. In addition, it proposed a major reform of the organizational architecture of accounting standard setting by establishing a Financial Reporting Council (FRC) to oversee the standard-setting process. Brown and Tarca show how public interest and interest group theories can be deployed to explain the outcome of these proposals: specifically why, in 1997–1998, Australia decided not to adopt IAS, and why the FRC proposal was broadly endorsed, potentially giving more local power to those responsible for Australian accounting. In the end, the votes of local vested interests won out. No surprise there then.Part III concludes with a paper by Brown and Tarca that appeared in Abacus in 2007. This paper examines the role of national independent enforcement bodies in achieving high quality financial reporting. Although many countries have now adopted IFRS, there is no single enforcement agency responsible for ensuring that the standards are implemented on a consistent basis. This issue is important because the potential comparability benefits of IFRS may fail to materialize if different countries operate enforcement mechanisms that vary in effectiveness. Also investors may be misled if they are led into believing that the quality of accounting is the same across all IFRS jurisdictions. The issue is exacerbated by the fact that IFRS are principles-based, thereby giving scope for different interpretations of what the standards actually require. The paper by Brown and Tarca traces the history of two important national independent enforcement bodies, i.e., the U.K.'s Financial Reporting Review Panel (FRRP) and the Australian Securities and Investment Commission. This paper shows that these two bodies, at least since around 2004,were reasonably successful in carrying out their duties, though questions remain about how to measure their effectiveness, and some commentators have expressed doubts about just how effective they have been. Such bodies are dependent to some extent on government funding, and this requires political will. Brown and Tarca provide a few pointers to the conditions necessary for effective enforcement. It would be of interest to study the extent to which these conditions apply in all of the jurisdictions that have adopted IFRS so far. Pursuing this line of thought, perhaps the IFRS Foundation should consider awarding some sort of official recognition to countries that have demonstrated a convincing commitment to faithful enforcement of IFRS. For example, the Blue Flag is a voluntary eco-label awarded to more than 3,850 beaches and marinas in 48 countries across Europe, South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, and the Caribbean (strangely, the list does not include Australia!!). Among other things, it provides an indication of locations where it is safe to swim. The IFRS could consider creating a similar award for jurisdictions where the local national enforcement mechanisms ensure that it is safe to rely on the IFRS-based accounting information produced by firms listed in that jurisdiction. Alternatively, perhaps, an international investor interest group might be willing to sponsor such an award.It seems that all good empiricists from time to time like to play with theory. Part IV contains a couple of theory papers by Brown. One of these conveys some thoughts on the optimum way to amortize goodwill. Time has passed this paper by, as the generally agreed view is that the routine amortization of goodwill fulfils no useful purpose. The more valuable contribution in this part is Brown's thoughts on the valuation of executive stock options containing features such as performance hurdles, and the possibility of early exercise. To add to the fun, Brown and his co-author also consider the impact of stochastic volatility on all of this. This paper shows off Brown's ability to identify and solve important practical problems.In summary, it is clear that Phil Brown has made major research contributions in accounting, corporate governance, and finance. A number of these have been published outside the U.S. oligopoly of “leading” journals, which is good to see. The role of Phil's leadership in enabling Australia to make a contribution to research disproportionate to the size of its academic population is also evident.Martin Shubik (2002, 1) describes bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing as “the stepchildren of economic theory.” He laments the divergence between accounting and economics (the slicker version of the descriptively more accurate title of “political economy”), and calls for a convergence between the two sister disciplines. This divergence has, indeed, been a long one except for a few interdisciplinary Ph.D. dissertations (e.g., Paton 1922; Canning 1929; Feroz 1982), and a rather asymmetrical and somewhat tense relationship between accounting and another younger sibling, namely, modern finance (Cunningham 2005).The collection of essays under review is a welcome addition to the accounting literature in that they articulate a relationship between accounting and development within the broader context of the social sciences. The authors seem to be arguing for broadening the mainstream accounting discourse to include developing and less developed countries (LDCs), in addition to the very developed Anglo-American (AA) market-based economies where modern finance theories originated and flourished.1 While this may disturb the current balance of power by raising some unsettling issues about the allocation of American Accounting Association-sponsored journal spaces and other resources, it is a discussion worth having at some point, since much of the mainstream accounting research seems to be so far removed from the issues that are of interest to LDCs.One counter argument to the authors' point of view might be that, with the rising tide of emerging capital markets “everyone is better off” because of the so called, “trickle-down effect.” However, as the authors document here and elsewhere, not everyone might be as well-off at the same time, and with the same speed and direction. Certainly, not in the LDCs where the proportional increase in the size of financial capital markets does not automatically correspond with a proportional decrease in poverty (Chapter 8).2Since there have been only a few theoretical breakthroughs on the growth theory (Solow 2007), and on the socio-economic and political developments in the LDCs ever since the controversial population control prescriptions of Malthus (1809), the essays under review are understandably exploratory and largely normative in their scope. They, however, cover a wide range of topics, including, but not limited to, the traditional role of multinational companies (MNCs, Chapter 15), role of donors (Chapter 2), transnational institutions (Chapter 4), auditors (Chapters 5 and 7), privatizations (Chapter 12), taxation (Chapter 14), emerging capital markets (Chapter 8), transfer pricing (Chapter 15), corruption (Chapter 13), microfinance institutions (MFI, Chapter 10), and social and environmental accounting (Chapter 16). While their breadth of coverage is impressive, one still notes the absence of entries on traditional topics, such as national income accounting—a topic that is, by consensus if not by default, covered more often in an economics textbook than in a governmental accounting text. Other missing entries relate to more recent developments on productivity growth accounting (e.g., Raab and Feroz 2007) reflecting, in part, the interests of the contributors to this volume.The papers under review defy any natural clustering except that they all relate to the common theme of accounting and development. I review them on a selective basis, keeping in mind the editors' sequencing of them. While all of the 16 chapters are well-written and worth reading for anyone interested in the subfield, especially ambitious graduate students looking for opportunities to make major interdisciplinary breakthroughs, I focus on the following subset for space constraints only.Cobham and McNair (Chapter 3) look at the illicit capital flows from LDCs to the various “secrecy jurisdictions” of the world, and their impact on LDCs in terms of loss of tax revenues (also Chapter 14), corruption (also Chapter 13), and environmental degradation (also Chapter 16). The authors show the relationship between MNCs' opacity (also Chapter 15), its contributions to illicit flows, and the concomitant negative implications for the LDC development (pp. 37–48). Notwithstanding that there are many difficult structural issues of trade, taxation, and transfer pricing (also Chapter 15) to be negotiated between the global north and south, and east and west, the authors conclude, “financial policies and practices of rich countries have grave responsibility for the financial secrecy that facilitates such damage to developing countries” (p. 36). They, however, sound optimistic that the solutions are within reach, “Ultimately these are all questions of political will, but ones to which the accounting profession can make a genuine contribution” (p. 36).Perera (Chapter 6) looks at the specific challenges facing the developing countries (DCs) in adopting the international financial reporting standards (IFRSs). He doubts that DCs “have an adequate supply of qualified and experienced accountants or a well-established accounting profession and regulators to interpret and adequately enforce the IFRSs” (p. 103). He illustrates his point with the help of concepts like “uncertainty expressions” which are required to be interpreted in making professional judgments (p. 102). These principle-based concepts could be misinterpreted, if not misused by professional accountants even in developed AA countries. Perera notes in a similar vein that, even though financial reporting and capital market activity in developed market-based economies are closely related, “an accounting system focused on efficient functioning of the capital market may not be suitable for DCs … The self-regulatory competitive market system cannot be depended upon as a mechanism for efficient allocation of scarce economic resources, since this mechanism is unreliable and unpredictable in its effect” (p. 103).Unerman and O'Dwyer (Chapter 9) begin with the proposition that the mechanisms of non-governmental organization (NGO) accounting and accountability can render a considerable amount of help to improve the efficiency and effectiveness with which the aid is delivered, and, thus, can have a very real impact on the quality of people's lives in developing nations (pp. 143–145). They make a strong case for a “rights-based-approach” (RBA) and “downward accountability” (as compared to the current modes of “identity accountability” and “upward accountability”) where beneficiaries will have an active voice in reporting the effectiveness of the NGOs. The authors argue that, while upward reporting may be very efficient from the point of view of donors, downward reporting, though time-consuming and messy, is more likely to be effective in the delivery of goods and services (pp. 153–159).The same argument for downward reporting could also be made for governmental and non-profit entities which currently, predominantly, follow the upward reporting model. One added advantage of downward reporting is that it is consistent with democratic values of grass root participation, and, hence, makes even more sense for governmental and non-profit accounting throughout the world. Some developed AA countries are only taking tentative steps in this direction. LDCs have a long way to go.Jacobs, Habib, Musyoki, and Jubb (Chapter 10) highlight both the problems and prospects of MFI as an agent for development in LDCs. They articulate the trade-offs (opportunity costs) between micro-financing and other developmental priorities. The authors raise some relevant questions about the net impact of MFIs, particularly for-profit MFIs, on hard-core poverty alleviation. They also point out the sustainability-profitability nexus and its dilutive impact on the core missions of MFIs (pp. 162–181).Wynne and Lawrence (Chapter 11) document the problems of external donor-imposed public financial management solutions, and their failures in meeting the basic preconditions of successful implementation (pp. 182–205). While the avowed goal of the World Bank and other donor agencies in imposing these solutions was “working for a world free of poverty” (p. 203), their strategies for implementation involving outside consultants such as PwC were fundamentally flawed. According to the authors, these strategies lacked the basic ingredients of success for implementation such as the empowerment of local government officials and local (national) ownership (pp. 198–203).Based on case studies on Bangladesh, Ghana, and Sri Lanka, the four editors (Chapter 12) examine whether privatizations improved management control, and whether this not only improved financial performance, but also served broader development goals with regard to employment, e.g., wages, job creation, and increased tax revenues for national governments (pp. 206–208). The authors find “privatizations brought improved management information systems through investments in more accurate, quicker, computerized internal controls, especially directed at improved market information, short-run planning, and matching production to market demand” (p. 213). However, “these changes proved to be transitory for cultural and political reasons” (p. 216).Everett (Chapter 13) highlights the problems of defining corruption from the narrow control perspective of property rights and preserving the interests of corporate shareholders and other providers of capital. He challenges the framing of corruption within the neoclassical economics and finance framework of principals (citizens) and agents (government officials). He also debunks the notion of scarcity, one of the key foundations of neoclassical economics. Instead, he places corruption both at the public and private sectors of the economy within the broader context of power and hunger (pp. 226–232). According to Everett, there are various forms and levels of hunger, including power and wealth which could lead to pathological behavior on the part of those whose hunger is not satiated. Corruption is a symptom of that psycho-pathological behavior (pp. 232–237). Chapters 13 and 3 together make a compelling case for defining corruption within the broader framework of power and global inequities in terms of distribution of resources.Last, but not the least, if the stated objective of the authors is to convince the editors of The Accounting Review to publish more “research on accounting in less developed countries” (p. 1), this book may not be of much help except to register the topic on the editorial radar, which is obviously important.First of all, the authors need to consider the common body of knowledge shared by most accounting reviewers. Very few, if any, accounting doctoral programs in America offer a course on the intersection of accounting and development. The predominantly British Commonwealth-based institutional affiliations of the contributors to this book are indirect testimony to that effect. It is not surprising that some U.S. journal editors may even have a problem in identifying accounting faculty who are both qualified and interested in reviewing papers on this topic.Secondly, most top-tier accounting journals, including The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, and Journal of Accounting and Economics, insist on mathematically sophisticated (analytical) and/or empirically verifiable and hard data-driven studies. This is, in part, a reflection of Karl Popper's and Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science tradition permeating most doctoral training programs in America, at least, since World War II.One may not agree with the narrow topical coverage, and methodological or philosophical orientation, of some top-tier accounting journals. However, in the short run encouraging freshly minted Ph.D.s or doctoral students to undertake empirical and/or analytical research studies that might sustain a rigorous review process at top-tier accounting journals might be a more fruitful strategy in advancing the subfield of accounting and development. In the long run, one hopes that the long divergence between accounting and political economy will be reconciled at a family get-together on the basis of mutual respect and in the spirit of gaining some knowledge and disseminating knowledge that truly benefits humanity.Accounting's origin as one of the first written forms of communication makes this book relevant to those who seek to understand accounting both as a discipline and as a practice. This volume is a broad compilation of analyses, critiques, historical accounts, and practical descriptions of the many facets of accounting communication, with a focus on external annual reports and with attention to how, and how well, accountants communicate and how they could improve their communication. The point of view is primarily that of accountants as documenters and reporters of financial and non-financial information, both quantitative and qualitative, to investors and to the market, although there is some minor discussion of communication within organizations. The paradigmatic assumptions underlying most of the volume, with the exception of the last chapter, are that the most important form of accounting communication is to the capital markets, and that accountants can clearly, accurately, and precisely communicate the information desired by those market participants. If you believe these assumptions, the companion offers a wide variety of perspectives and research avenues to explore. If you do not believe these assumptions, the volume still offers several chapters of interest. Below, I describe the contents of the volume, followed by an analysis and evaluation tailored for researchers and teachers.The volume includes four parts; each comprises three to five essays. The variety of topics is sufficient for beginning researchers, established researchers looking for new perspectives, and educators looking to serve their students better. Part 1, The Landscape, reviews the current state of accounting communication and its history. Part 2, A Variety of Media: Beyond Numbers, includes analyses of various forms of accounting communication and how those forms reveal intentions and influence understanding. Part 3, Contemporary and Professional Issues, addresses a variety of topics currently on the profession's front-burner. These include sustainability and XBRL reports, communicating within an organization, communication apprehension, and teaching business writing. Part 4, Construction of Meaning, explores practical considerations in financial reporting and ends with a critical analysis which questions the profession's paradigmatic assumption that accounting communication in its current form is capable of providing a transparent, accurate picture of reality. Christine Cooper argues in the final essay that accounting is a particular group's version of reality, which benefits some members of society at a cost to others.Because this volume contains such a variety of topics and writing styles, I tailored my analysis and evaluation to fit three particular types of readers. I evaluate the book's appropriateness for researchers (both those who agree with the importance and ability of accounting to communicate useful information to investors [traditionalists] and those who do not [questioners]), and to accounting educators. While this approach is limiting, it should serve a majority of this journal's readership.For traditionalists actively researching in the accounting discipline and for new researchers, there are many chapters of interest. In Chapter 2, Lee Parker's literature review of accounting communication research since the 1970s focuses on communication to investors, offering deep coverage of that topic, with nods to communication with employees and to communication needs in accounting education. It provides a useful overview for those beginning to research the creation, intention, and effects of corporate annual reports. The following chapter is narrower in its approach, providing a detailed description of earlier attempts at understanding the use of language to communicate accounting information. This chapter ties the challenges of reporting reality, identified by Chambers in 1966, to current challenges facing accountants. Both chapters offer a context for framing research on corporate financial reporting.For a deeper perspective, read Theo van Leeuwen's step-by-step analysis of an actual annual report, in which he clearly explains how to critically analyze a company's discourse (accounting, finance, public relations, and legal disclaimer) to understand its creators' underlying intentions and actions. This theory-based approach provides strong grounding for annual report-related research, and should appeal to traditionalists and questioners alike. It should be useful to those looking to link these communications to performance, fraud prediction, or other organizational outcomes.John Hitchins and Laura Taylor's Big Four Practitioner View also focuses on the annual report, stating that it is the most important written communication companies make to their investors (p. 213). These authors are two experienced professionals who have witnessed the behind-the-scenes challenges companies face when developing their annual reports. Their chapter focuses on the proliferation of information in response to regulation, and how more information leads to overload and poorer decision-making. They propose that companies can improve communication by integrating information in a purposeful way in their annual reports, while reducing clutter arising from immaterial and repetitive information. The authors operate on the assumption that there is a set of information which a company can provide that will result in better decision-making for investors; however, they are not clear or precise about what “better decision-making” is. Their integrated approach relies heavily on companies being able to choose the information they provide to tell their own business story. The authors encourage not only innovation, but differentiation in reporting, with the exhortation to “