The Right Of Setting Accounting Rules: Sharing Arrangement And Convergence Paradox

With the acceleration of economic globalization, the development of accounting standards have reached the global convergence stage from international harmonization. Nowadays it has become realistic issue for worldwide. But few people have applied Institutional Economics to interpret this process. In fact, accounting standards are one of institutional arrangement in itself. The convergence of different accounting standards with IFRS means institutional transition. Ten years ago, Xie Deren proposed a very far-sighted argument in his doctoral dissertation: "Due to the paces of accounting internationalization is obviously accelerated, it will inevitably have a far-reaching impact on the Contract for the right of setting accounting rules".Therefore, this dissertation intend to explore sharing arrangement for the right of setting accounting rules and explain the convergence of accounting standards by using Institutional Economics. For specific aspect, this dissertation analyzes IFRS and its formulation process and constructs a research framework on the sharing arrangement for the right of setting accounting rule in the context of the global convergence. On this basis we discuss the following content:Firstly, this dissertation is based on the latest "Uses of IFRSs by Jurisdiction" and explains both dynamically and statically the status of IASB as sharer on the right of setting accounting standards through. Furthermore, this dissertation proposes that because the powerful interest groups headed by EU and the United States occupied the dominant position in the IASB, the powerful interest groups are the real sharer. Therefore, the boundary in the sharing arrangement will be expanded with the global convergence of accounting standards.Secondly, faced with the right-sharing of setting accounting standards arising from economic globalization, different countries take various measures: EU continuously enhanced endorsement mechanism to deal with; the United States has chosen the co-ordinate their work programmes with IASB in order to achieve a single set of high quality standards over time. In essence, both EU and the United States seek to maximize their impacts on the formulation of IFRS.Finally, there are some paradoxes with the global convergence of accounting standards: (1) The world powers dominating the formulation of IFRS in themselves have not adopted IFRS as much as other countries;(2) The right of formulating accounting standards among different counties is not equal any more;(3) For those countries which have implemented Rules-Based Standards, two bodies in assigning the right of setting accounting rules, possess reversely varying right space.