Tomo Suzuki

The Epistemology of Macroeconomic Reality: The Keynesian Revolution from an Accounting Point of View

Despite the fact that the concept of the “macroeconomy” first emerged after the 1930s, only becoming prevalent after the 1950s, macroeconomic terms are ubiquitous today. Historians refer to the Keynesian Revolution as the origin of the macroeconomic revolution. This paper addresses the revolution from an accounting point of view, and argues that the prevalence of the notion of the macroeconomy and the widespread of economic management of modern society originate partly from the movement of accounting expressionism that is the social construction of official economic reality in an accounting framework. The development history of British national accounting is of central importance to the development of macroeconomics. This paper integrates the abstract theme of social constructivism with concrete evidence from recently available archives of Keynes, Stone, Meade and Bray.

The accounting figuration of business statistics as a foundation for the spread of economic ideas

The new accounting research has been devoted to illuminating the social and constitutive aspects of accounting. This has been done, however, in many cases, in the setting of micro managerial accounting. The effects of financial and macroeconomic accounting on modern economic society have not been examined in depth from an epistemological and critical viewpoint. This article attempts to develop a hypothesis that financial accounting (particularly, that of macro economic entities) has been centrally implicated in the process through which economic ideas and economic management have become ubiquitous in modern society. Accountings power and the reason for its steady growth are sought in its various formalities rather than its representational capacity. Several factors that are considered to constitute the formalities form a self-perpetuating apparatus that facilitates the prevalence of accounting in modern economic society.

A History of Japanese Management Accounting

Abstract Since the 1980s, the term “Japanese management accounting” has attracted serious attention, not in the least because of Japanese companies’ international competitiveness. However, the term is often used without defining its exact referent. What is Japanese management accounting? Where does it come from? Are there any defining characteristics that make it “Japanese,” which enhance Japanese companies’ international competitiveness? Is Japanese management accounting particularly socially and culturally determined, and therefore, rarely applicable in foreign companies? After examining the evolution of Japanese management accounting, from the mid–nineteenth century to the year 2000, this chapter addresses the aforementioned questions from historical perspectives.

Financialisation of global markets: the role of private sector accounting standard setting

Financial reporting often creates new realities rather than merely reflecting reality. How, then, would the globalization of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), as a specific mode of presenting reality, affect our markets? Drawing on fair value accounting instead of traditional historical cost accounting, IFRS makes the business realm and society amenable to financialisation. This process of converting real markets into tradable components, particularly by the private sector, may not contribute to sustainable market growth. This paper introduces three case studies to illustrate the significant impact IFRS makes on real sector markets. These consequences would in turn affect financial markets in the long term.

The consequences of private relationship between audit partners and their clients

Abstract A private partner–client relation is revealed when sometimes signing audit partners and their clients switch to new audit firms but the audit partners continue to sign on audit reports for these clients in the new audit firms. In this study, we examine the economic consequences associated with such a private relation between audit partners and their clients. Using data from China, where the names of signing audit partners are identified in audit reports, we find that clients with private partner–client relationship tend to have higher costs of equity capital, lower firm values, and poorer future stock and accounting performances than their counterparts with no private partner–client relationship. Additional analyses show that the unfavorable consequences are not mitigated after the enforcement of mandatory audit partner rotation requirement in China. The findings imply that impaired independence at the audit partner level adversely affects clients and that more actions need to be taken to sever the private bond between audit partners and their clients.