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What knowledge and skills (KSs) are necessary for complex Agreed-Upon Procedures (AUP) engagements, such as those that include eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) tagged data? This study contributes by investigating these issues in two studies: (1) a survey and (2) structured interviews of accounting professionals with XBRL expertise. Survey results suggest commonality in perceptions of the KSs needed in two knowledge categories, "Accounting and Financial Reporting" and "Undertaking AUP on XBRL Instance Documents," and, variability in ratings of two categories: "XBRL technology" and "audit procedures." Interview results indicate that knowledge of the U.S. GAAP Taxonomy is most important to AUP engagements followed by the nature of AUP engagements. The results suggest: (1) a need for clarification of XBRL-relevant KSs and (2) an important but unfilled role for universities and scholars in discerning, supporting, and developing the KSs needed to support complex assurance engagements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines both the opportunities and limitations in the use of social media for accounting research. Given the dynamic nature of social media and the richness of the context, there are opportunities for researchers to directly observe communication and information exchanges, typically within the context of an observable social network. The paper provides an overview of the characteristics of four commonly used social network sites (SNSs): Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and StockTwits. The data collection details, opportunities, and limitations are set out. The paper also provides illustrative examples of codes that a researcher might employ to extract information from the SNSs. To provide a comparison of accounting-relevant interactions, the paper measures the extent of posts on StockTwits, Twitter, and Facebook for a random sample of corporate announcements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demand for online information in stock markets around the world has led to many stock exchanges requiring the disclosure of information on listed corporations through the stock exchange website. We examine the impact of online access to corporate information on stock exchange websites on market transparency. We posit that institutionalized online information dissemination is likely to reduce the level of information asymmetry in stock markets. To increase the spread in the types of markets and market features in our sample, we expand the sample size of 40 or fewer countries commonly used in recent cross-country studies to 110 countries. Our proxy for the level of information asymmetry in stock markets is the cost of equity capital (COE). We examine the online availability of corporate information on the websites of the stock exchanges (AVAILABILITY) of the 110 countries, and find that there is a negative association between COE and AVAILABILITY. Further analysis shows that this association is stronger for emerging market countries, equity-based (common law) countries, and low press transparency countries. We conclude that while institutionalized online information dissemination is beneficial to all capital markets, it mostly benefits emerging capital markets, equity-based markets (common law countries) and markets with weaker alternative information sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accounting academy has been long recognized as the premier developer of entry-level talent for the accounting profession and the major provider of executive education via master's-level curricula and customized executive education courses. However, the impact that the academy's collective ideas have had on the efficiency and effectiveness of practice has been less recognized. In this paper, we summarize key contributions of academic accounting research to practice in financial accounting, auditing, tax, regulation, managerial accounting, and information systems. Our goal is to increase awareness of the effects of academic accounting research. We believe that if this impact is more fully recognized, the practitioner community will be even more willing to invest in academe and help universities address the escalating costs of training and retaining doctoral-trained research faculty. Furthermore, we believe that this knowledge will attract talented scholars into the profession. To this end, we encourage our colleagues to refer liberally to research successes such as those cited in this paper in their classes, in their textbooks, and in their presentations to nonacademic audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]