Accounting Theory: Some Books I Read

时间过得还是很快的,转眼间,研究生生涯的三分之二时间已然逝去。借着今日的凉风习习,反思我过去两年所读过的书,其实还是不少的。尽管我并没有从头到尾完整的读过其中任何一本(我觉得读书更多的是选择),但是我还是打算就我读过的书来做一个总结。今天我们先做的主要涉及会计理论方面。

会计理论,不同于本科阶段所学的会计实务知识,是一种更多的讨论会计底层的学科,比如准则制定的导向问题,目标问题,以及投资者与经营者之间的委托代理关系等等。这是大多数学校都会给研究生开设的基础课,我所在的学校也不例外。同时,在我的学校,本科似乎也有类似的课程。对本科生而言,这类课程有助于他们去考研,而对研究生而言,这是他们学习如何做研究的启航点。而我的梳理就从最狭隘的传统会计理论开始。由于我水平有限,错误在所难免,望见谅。

我第一次接触会计理论,并不是始于研究生阶段,而是始于本科时代所读的这本由孙玉甫等人所作,由盖地作序的《广义财务会计理论》。尽管在今天看来,这本教材多少有点肤浅,但是他的确是第一次让我了解到了除了会计分录和财务报告外会计学科的广阔的天地。通过这本书,我第一次听说了财务会计的准则制定目标,原则等等的理论解释,同时也第一次知道了美国,英国ASB(现为IASB)等机构的简单情况。由于我以前所学的内容多为实务性知识,而有悖于中国准则的名词和知识都较少听到。如利得,全面收益等等。尽管当时只是一知半解,但是无意中,这本书却让我萌发了对会计理论的兴趣,进而促使我做出了考会计研究生的决定。

而进入研究生阶段以后,开始接触的第一本会计理论方面的书籍则是林志军和葛家樹教授所作的《现代西方会计理论》。我想很多人知道这本研究生教材。这本教材几乎是我们当时上课时候的范本。该教材很好的解释了很多与准则制定与应用相关的理论基础。考虑到葛家樹教授所作的研究,这本书详细介绍了美国FASB的各项准则中的大量内容,如物价变动,全面收益,以及资产负债表观下的所得税会计处理(我国已采用)等。更加难能可贵的是,这本书也同时简单介绍了Ball and Brown (1968)所开始的,由WattsZimmerman人提出的实证会计理论,尽管限于作者的理解,这本书对该内容并没有做到客观评价,但也表现了老一辈学者对当代研究的关注,实已难能可贵。相比较于《广义财务会计理论》,这本书显然更具有内涵,难度也更大些。但考虑到此书为研究生教材,而前者为本科教材,这种差异也就可以理解了。

受我恩师的影响,进入研究生阶段以后,我就开始不再关注这些传统理论,转而开始对罗切斯特学派所倡导的实证研究(其实这是国内的误传,更准确的,这是经验研究)。这种转换促使我开始去拜读WattsZimmerman的大作——《实证会计理论》。这是一本经典的英文教材,但我最早阅读的是中文版。这本教材主要讲解了EMH,CAPM,盈余公告的信息含量,竞争性假说,薪酬计划等问题。与其说这本书是教材,还不如说该书是一本论文的综述。个人感觉,作为一个会计研究生,这本书是不可不读的。当然也有一个问题,就是我觉得这本书的中文译本的翻译比较生硬,有些句子艰涩难懂。而最近人大出版的英文原版则读起来会轻松很多。如果诸位愿意一堵此书风采的话,我建议诸位直接读原版。如果与WattsZimmerman于1990年在Accounting Review上所发表的十年回顾一同阅读,则效果会更好。尽管很多国内学者,尤其是老一辈学者并不认可,但是这的确是会计理论的一个进步。经济学,统计学等数理方法的引入,可以很大程度上提高会计研究的严谨性。

但是《实证会计理论》也有一个致命的缺点,那就是,该书并不适合没有研究经历的人阅读。因为这书的内容相对零散,而且写作风格类似于文献回顾,却不提供必要的理论链接。所以在读此书遇到困难之后,在我姐的指导下,我接触了另一本著名教材——《财务会计理论》。该书由加拿大滑铁卢大学William Scott所著,更新频繁,该书涉及了几乎所有的国际顶级期刊上的重要研究,并且用通俗而朴实的语言进行了诠释,而去掉了原论文中大量的数理模型和推论。尽管该书的立足点只是在于给本科生和不立志于做研究的学生提供理论的介绍,但是该书却为我们提供了一个不错的视野和过度平台。唯一的缺憾是,该书的中文版翻译并不好,而国内却没有影印版。我手头的英文版则是通过大哥从新加坡国立图书馆复印而来。细读之下,感觉非常棒。英文原版可以从Amazon购得,但是价格非常贵。

先写这么多吧,等过几天再把其他的书补上来。水平有限,如有不实之处,还请多多见谅。

Staying at Home: A Review of My Summer Vacation

It is getting more difficult to remind myself of the old times when I was still a boy that was interested in wandering around the garden in my grandma‘s house and playing some tricks with my friends. In fact, I am getting more and more preferred of staying at home or the dorm, spending the whole day on writing, reading and PC games. The summer vacation this time follows this ‘tradition’ thoroughly that I spent quite little time of going outside.

The mere reason for this staying comes from the GRE failure. That is, I would have to spend more time that I firstly anticipated to prepare for that exam in October. Memorizing the words and phrases in a glossary for GRE is not an easy job since you have to revisit the words from time to time to avoid them from being forgotten. In fact I doubt myself sometimes why I made the choice on pursuing my PhD program overseas, which lead me to the dilemma at present. But once it is determined, okay, just go forward. The exam in October is to be my last chance in Wuhan. I do admire the atmosphere overseas since my visit to Hawaii last year.

The rearrangement on time for the GRE exams totally abandoned the plans that I made previously which involves reading classical literatures and visiting some parks. I even prepared an annual card for my travelling. While, what a pity, the card was used for only once when Jiang and his wife came in July. The books I ordered from the Amazon are also put aside. In fact, I was just willing to take some study on economics and accounting theory in this summer originally, aiming at preparing for the PhD entrance exams in China. However, the fact is quite apparent: they are all substituted and occupied by the GRE again.

I am scheduled to be back to Wuhan in September 7th, too many affairs are waiting for me. Perhaps, it is also the time for my change of the living style.

Liquor: Can they mean everything?

Quite occasionally I earned a chance to talk to Yin, a staff working in Ernst & Young.  After the accomplishment of the talk on some professional issues, we turn to the capability for liquors.  In fact, in the past few years, quite a lot of my friends and colleagues have tried to persuade me to improve my capability for this, while, I did very little improvement in this.

I don’t know if it is the influence from my families that provokes my situation today. My daddy is quite a good drinker and he can drink quite much wine during some banquets, including the birthday ceremony for my relatives and wedding ceremony for my friends.  Perhaps I have seen too much occurrence on the unconsciousness from the persons who have drunk too much, including my daddy that I hate the drinking from my heart. Thus I keep the record of taking no wine since my birth, and it lasted to the graduation from Nanjing Normal University and my admission to the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law.

I don’t know if it is the tradition and convention in Hubei that breaks my recording of this. I started to take some wine following the suggestions from my friends. Though my capability for that today evens shows to be embarrassed and even a girl can beat me undoubtedly on a battlefield of drinking, I suppose no further improvement on my capability on this.  Perhaps it is my chillness on alcohol, a special attitude that renders my limitation on this. And such limitation definitely drove me to the rejection of the wines, even champagne during my last trip to Hawaii, but only the acceptance for juice, which, under most occasions, are prepared for girls.

But the limitation can definitely bring me quite a lot of trouble on my job seeking, as many friends suggests. Given China as an example of the Eastern Asia where people pay adequate attention the relationships among the individuals and banquet are taken as a main communication channel for both family and commerce, drinking is undoubtedly to be a good and sufficient way to get closer between persons, no matter whether you are a custom or a manufacturer. Mr. Li, a friend who is working in Eastern Airline of China,, showed me the importance of drinking if a willing to be a manager is considered. And Yin also provides the similar conclusion to me tonight. More importantly, she showed me the importance also applied to the girls, but not only the boys as I initially suggested.

However, the healthy problem and disease that are accompanied by excess drinking cannot be omitted. Too much input of alcohol can lead to problems on lungs and several surveys shows the significant relationship between the drinking and the lung cancer.  But why do so many people keep on drinking even if they are fully aware of this potential threat to their health? The reason can be simple: they want succeed. In a competent world nowadays, succeeding on career means too much, good income, better housing condition, and excellent medical care and so on.

While, can drink be the only sufficient way of communication? The answer is definitely negative. There are some other ways, including Golf, tennis, and others. And why not choose some other activities that can reduce the threat to our health? We are considering the success to our career, its okay, but at the same time, pay attention to your health.

A Great Move on My Blogs

I eventually finished the whole works to move my blogs into this new site. It is a great job, since I have to do plenty of works to reset all the links to the cited images in every post.

The main contents, and the most important ones, are from QQ Zone. Most of my posts that can reflect my life and thoughts are stored there, including the travelling to Hawaii. According to the suggestions from the internet, firstly I use Blogbus to transfer all the posts into a XML document, and then import that ino the WordPress. Here I use the filter that can directly read the XML document from the Blogbus without any converting needed.

But the most great problem is the links to the image. Traditionally, the external links from QQ Albums are not supported. That is, all the links will be broken once the posts are moved.  However, the Blogbus draws the encrypted links to the image as well when the posts are drawn, and most images are correctly displayed. While I  am still worried about the links, since when even a tiny adjustment was adapted by QQ Zone, all the links would be broken and dropped. But I do find no suffiient way to solve this but only download the images to my local computer and update that again.

The move from Blogger.com is much easier. It is quite an old blogger service provider (BSP) that I started to use in1995. But following the traditions here that the service was also soon GFWed when there are more and more Chinese users involved.  A direct WordPress XML document was firstly exported from WordPress.com where the blogs from Blogger.com can be directly imported. Then the document is imported into my site and some categories and tags are added manually. The only problem is that the service from WordPress.com is also GFWed and some special actions are adapted.

Till now, all the works are completed, and you have access to all my posts from this site directly since 2005. But do care that I deleted some very short posts since they are really too short to deliver adequate information to the readers. In fact, they are more fit to the Twitter though there was no such service at that time.

Thanks for the technical supports from my friend Bill Wung. It is his suggestion and help that brings me great convenience in this accomplishment.

New Working Paper Available: Link From SSRN

An E-mail from SSRN shows  that my new working paper co-oporated with Prof. Wang Xiongyuan, my tutor, has been qualified as a new submission to the working paper archive, sharing it with the colleagues all over the world. Occasionally I saw my last submissiion last year, a sentence-to-sentence translation, which reminds me of my old days when I firstly learn to write a paper in English. Though the work is not a writen one, but only a translation. The one that I submitted this time is a fully written one.

The paper is also submitted to Prof. Li, as a submission of revised work to APJAE, but the result is unknown yet. I will update the progress here.

The working paper can be downloaded here, but please keep the rules from SSRN and basic academic ethics.

Click here to link to that paper

It maight be my last paper to be accomplished in ZNUFE, many factors promote this decision. I need more time to work for some other personal affairs that can decide my future. What’s more, I need more time to learn more, building up solid foundation before doing my next research.

GFW: What are you doing indeed?

本来不想发表什么言论,只是今天实在忍不住了,因为我发现GFW的流氓行径已经上升到了一定的水准了。

事情的缘由很简单,那就是我突发奇想想跑到Youtube上去看视频。于是我就故伎重演,修改了本地的hosts文件,结果打开发现页面严重错乱。

最近玩博客让我知道了更多的专业知识,猜想这种页面错乱估计是两种可能,要么JavaScript没有加载,要么就是CSS的框架出错。但是想想不可能啊,毕竟我的有线通网络怎么的也有2M的带宽,浏览器端的ActiveScript工作也正常,怎么回事儿呢?本地hosts添加的IP地址也可以访问,直接显示Google页面,没有问题啊。

上网检索发现,原来是GFW使用了秘密武器,它并没有去ban掉那些IP地址,也不再玩DNS域名劫持,可恶的是,他直接ban掉了一个yting.com的域名。咋一看似乎这个域名跟youtube并没有多大关联,然而事实上youtube页面的两个重要css文件就在此域名下。不得不佩服GFW们的天才水平。

VOA中文主页无法访问,哥们忍了,BBC中文主页打不开,我忍了,因为我可以去看英文页面,但是这次的youtube行为,实在是做的有些水准,呵呵

突然想起来了某国的光明网了,呵呵,似乎此网络还是免费的。。。

我无语了,干活吧,呵呵。。。

Manuscript Finished: Some thoughts about my past two years

Eventually I get my manuscript finished, under the suggestions from my tutor. It should have been finished earlier but thanks to the attitude from my tutor, I really don’t know why he is so clam about this.  He is being too calm but which unfits his demand, at least I suppose so. While, fortunately, his mood these days seems to be good, and his working efficiency is recovering. What’s more, he is recovering his confidence on research.

I don’t know if the things I did fits the value on my sacrifice for the past two years. The unbalanced distribution from our team definitely draws me out of the scholarships and awards. I am wondering if such occurrence meets my rank among the 90 colleagues as No.1.  Is keeping a balance between the input and output can be that difficult?  To be or not to be, that’s a question

Unexpected Gifts: Piles of Mails from My Mailbox

昨天发生了很多事情,不仅仅是我的GRE考试,同时我也收到了一大堆的邮件,那些邮件是因为我搬来这里一直没有拿到邮箱钥匙而没有去收。昨天被邮递员叔叔叫下了楼,说塞不下了,让我收拾收拾。真是不看不知道,一看吓一跳啊,呵呵。里面有N封来自各大航空公司的邮件。大多是我去年出游的副产品。最搞笑的是,我后来选择的是美西北航空,并没有订购全日空的机票,但是全日空仍然兢兢业业的给我寄来了日文版和英文版的材料,外加一张卡片,呵呵,只是看不懂上面的日文,哪天找朱朱给我解读下去。

最让我诧异的是来自于Benben的礼物,两本Economics of Accounting,呵呵,本来都以为寄丢了,却没想到是在我邮箱里躺着。具体关于这本书,就不介绍了。它是分析性会计学的权威教材,相当于微观的MVG,呵呵,是去年Prof. Li推荐给我的,不过呢,这书只能自己研究了,国内做分析性会计学的人真是屈指可数。算了,能看懂多少是多少吧,万一侥幸真看懂了,呵呵,我就。。。。(此处省略若干字)

不过不得不提到的是,邮箱里的垃圾邮件也不少,呵呵,绝不亚于我的电子邮箱,什么欧尚,家乐福的广告真是有一大堆,呵呵

Revisiting SHUFE: Second Attempt Starts Here

昨日重游了中山北一路的上海财大的GRE考场,一切还是那么熟悉,不过考场规则略有变动,比如压缩了键盘熟悉的时间,签名同时需要使用中文等等,呵呵,不过上财考场的考务人员还是比较热心的,呵呵,服务比我在南师大的托福考场所经历的好了很多。难道这里也有地区差异?

不知道火车站怎么排的时间,两趟火车

昨日重游了中山北一路的上海财大的GRE考场,一切还是那么熟悉,不过考场规则略有变动,比如压缩了键盘熟悉的时间,签名同时需要使用中文等等,呵呵,不过上财考场的考务人员还是比较热心的,呵呵,服务比我在南师大的托福考场所经历的好了很多。难道这里也有地区差异?

不知道火车站怎么排的时间,两趟火车居然相差有两个小时,为了避免过去坐冷板凳,我还是选择了11点的火车,呵呵,或许是由于前阶段的列车运营事故,现在的动车组的列车速度明显下降,时速不超过180公里了,当然速度也慢了很多,从以前的30多分钟延长到了40来分钟。不过好在我所在的的考场就在地铁三号线的旁边,所以过去并不耽误。事实上,我到达考场的时间还提前了两三分钟,呵呵。

所抽到的题目是典型的高频题,本来想写错误使人进步,但是没有思路展开,于是写了另一个经典题目,关于领导是否需要具有高道德标准。不过这个题目太高频了,我估计拿高分太难。毕竟我们是老外,不可能在语言上有什么亮点。就如北美范文的作者所言,如果要把自己当成什么文学家来写文章,那将是非常痛苦的。对美国人都如此,更何况我们这个把英语作为外语的人群呢?

考试的键盘不好,没有我第一次的感觉那么好。呵呵,不过好在小时候练过英文打字,这方面倒是没吃上什么亏。我的写作速度比上次还快了点,Issue部分我还修改了好几次,当然主要是改文章的逻辑顺序和连接词,其他也改不了什么。不过这次的Argument让我大感奇怪。他主要是说一个团队做了两次研究,结果前后不一致,于是就认为前者是错的。按理说这个题目不难,但是由于是一个并列关系,要组织比较好的让步攻击并不容易。这是有悖于我们平时的做法的。呵呵

出了考场,直接上地铁,然后回到火车站,去KFC吃了顿,发现时间正好可以上车。呵呵,感谢这两年的旅行经历,让我对时间的计算精度又提高了一个数量级。

天气太热,就没有在上海逗留了,直接回家凉快了。不知道为什么,站在上海,我怎么就没有在外地的感觉呢?

Knowledge Obtaining: Solitude or Interaction?

Nowadays we are facing the difficulties of mastering the knowledge that is either required by our daily job or living. We need the knowledge the conduct the way that we work, we need that to fix the errors that we make, and we need that to help explain the problems that we meet. Some scholars argue that people should make full efforts to master knowledge as much as possible that they can acquire, and some others do not agree with that. But is it that necessary for us to master all the knowledge that we can acquire? The answer is obviously no. In fact, we can obtain the knowledge we want through the interaction with others as well.

We are living in an era that there are far more knowledge than that we can master. In fact, it is the development on both the science and arts in modern times that deep specialization on knowledge that produces great amount of points of knowledge, which is impossible to be mastered individually. Taking the knowledge of accounting for example, it is no doubt for a professional staff to master the principles of accounting, while if you are working for a large group, you are to find various styles of transaction and bills that you are to take into the practice of accounting. It is quite a large number of these styles that induces different positions and fields in the field of this profession, which includes risk management, accounting payables and receivables, etc. It is all these positions in accounting that forms the entire system of that, which can hardly be accomplished by one person or two.

And knowledge can be obtained by the interaction with others, not only through solitude. With the same reason as discussed above as over specification on knowledge, different people have their own interest and advantage, and different knowledge’s can thus been obtained through the interactions between them. This is just the reason why the team-working form is becoming that popular in large companies. Taking the team for a software engineering at the medium level for example, different positions are included in this team, such as external package, database designing and structure engineering. The knowledge that is required in this team can thus be obtained through the interaction within the team, and more importantly, it is unwise and unnecessary for the members in the team to master all the knowledge through solitude, which can be a difficult task.

But we have to admit that some knowledge can only be solitude, and they are to be essential for the interaction that I discussed above. This knowledge mainly refers to the fundamental course, such as math, language, principles of economics etc. They form the fundamentals and boot the probability of the interaction. Just reconsider the example on the team of software engineering, if one of the members within the team that is not that familiar with the basics of the relevant knowledge, such as the basics of programming, the database management, how can he interact with his colleagues? Such interaction can only be successful and the knowledge be obtained when the relevant parties are qualified to the fundamentals and their professional competences are identical.

In sum we find the knowledge can be obtained both through the solitude and the interaction with the others. But they are of two layers; the fundamentals should be obtained through the solitude and the professional ones from the interaction instead. It is impossible for any individual to master all the knowledge that can be acquired totally. Knowledge comes from both the solitude and the interaction with others boosts our working efficiency.

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