Corporate Reporting: Its Future Evolution (1980)

In 1980, the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) published a landmark research study called Corporate Reporting: Its Future Evolution. "The study is directed to all those who are interested or concerned with the publication and the use of corporate financial information in Canada and elsewhere. It should be of particular interest to accounting standard setters, but the analysis, argument and conclusions are equally important to all of the other groups of people interested in financial accounting." Chapter 10 of the study offers a proposed evolutionary solution to the problem of establishing accounting standards.

International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board - Update 1 (2005)

The International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB) met in Oslo, Norway on March 14-17, 2005. This was the first meeting of the IPSASB since the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) reconstituted the Public Sector Committee (PSC) as the IPSASB in November 2004.  The IPSASB Update 1 bulletin (April 2005) describes the work program, lists the members and observers, and identifies International Public Sector Accounting Standards at that time. Information on IPSASB meetings (from 2001), exposure drafts and comment letters (from 2005) and other digital archives are available on the IFAC website.

Digital Archive - Australian Accounting Standards Board

The Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) is an independent accounting standard-setter based in Melbourne, Australia. The AASB maintains a digital archive on its website that provides access to a range of superseded archival records including post-2005 documents and pre-2005 standards. The archive also includes general documents comprising: (1) Policy statements – these described various operating policies of the AASB; (2) Statements of accounting concepts – archived conceptual framework documents; and Publications – archived technical articles and other publications.

International Convergence of Accounting Standards—A Brief History

International convergence of accounting standards is not a new idea. The concept of convergence first arose in the late 1950s in response to post World War II economic integration and related increases in cross-border capital flows. Initial efforts focused on harmonization—reducing differences among the accounting principles used in the world’s major capital markets. By the 1990s, the idea of harmonizing accounting standards was replaced by the concept of convergence—the development of a single set of high-quality, international accounting standards that would be used in at least all major capital markets. (Refer to the FASB website for a chronology of some of the key events in the evolution of the international convergence of accounting standards.)