EDITORIAL

The December 2007 Editorial announced that there would be a changed set of editorial arrangements beginning in 2008. From the first issue of 2008, for a transitional period, the journal will be co-edited by Graeme Dean (sole editor since 1994) and Stewart Jones. This retains the tradition of professors of Accounting at Sydney University being the Editors of Abacus. The June 2008 issue will also provide details of further changes to the editorial board structure, including the names of Associate Editors by topic. These announcements will be fully described on the Abacus Blackwell website.

All papers submitted before the end of 2007 are being processed manually and continue to be administered by Graeme Dean. Papers submitted from 1 January 2008 will be processed electronically under the Manuscript Central online system (see the Abacus Blackwell website for details) and will be administered by Stewart Jones and Graeme Dean for a transitional period. Thereafter Stewart Jones will be responsible for all editorial matters.

In June 2007 the inauguration of the Abacus US$10,000 Annual Manuscript Award was also announced. The award initially has been funded for five years. Papers published in the four issues of Abacus for that year are eligible for the inaugural award; the winner is to be announced in the first half of 2008.

Approaching the middle of its fifth decade of publishing broad-based, eclectic research, Abacus seeks to maintain its academic leadership in accounting thought and practice. Abacus publishes original research involving ‘international studies on accounting’ covering a myriad of topics and using various research methods. It remains one of the few journals with such a focus (see Editorial, February 2005, for more details). Wells (2000, p. 265) observed that the foundation editor of Abacus, Ray Chambers: ‘had no fixed ideas about the type of subject areas to be published in Abacus. Articles could cover matters of practical import or mere curiosity: “But there's a host of other things as well from Cloud-9 to the good earth. We have no limits except qualitative ones for well-evidenced, well-expressed, well-reasoned stuff, we have a voracious appetite”’ (AUTTA News Bulletin, 1969). That policy persists.

The current issue covers a wide range of broad-based research in respect of subject matter and research methods—a feature of earlier issues, as revealed in Table 4's breakdown of previous years’ submissions.

This issue begins with Habib's ‘Corporate Transparency, Financial Development and the Allocation of Capital: Empirical Evideuce’, an empirical analysis of whether capital is allocated efficiently in facilitating an economy's growth. It shows that countries with well-developed financial architecture improve capital allocation and extends Wurgler (2000) by investigating the role of an important economic institution—the financial reporting system—on the efficiency of capital allocation. The examination of accounting's macroeconomic role is continued in the study by Arnaboldi and Lapsley which examines the implementation of ‘Best Value’—an audit tool of the U.K. government's modernization policy—in local government, specifically in Scotland. Drawing on Power's (1997) Audit Society thesis, the paper examines the impact of this key concept on the management of these public services to determine whether auditing practices enhance transparency and accountability of management actions in local government.

Attention then switches to financial reporting, where Rosenfield analyses a contentious matter for standards setters as they move from ‘reliability to relevance’ criteria underpinning their ‘fair value-based promulgations’. Namely, he considers the matter of ‘Prospects: A Missing Piece of Selling Price Reporting’. He seeks to add insights in respect of the conceptual objection to current selling price reporting (CSPR) that, in its determination of asset amounts, such reporting ignores the reporting entity's prospects (potential, promise, outlook) for achievement of possession of or of access to consumer general purchasing power¹ beyond its achievement to date of such possession or access.

Accounting's predictive properties are the focus of Carey et al. as they explore empirically, using a large set of Australian data, the potential costs to Australian auditors and their clients from the issuance of first-time going-concern-modified audit opinions during the period 1994–97. A matched sample of financially distressed firms receiving a clean audit opinion is examined. While results suggest that auditor switching is positively associated with receipt of a going-concern-modified opinion, empirical evidence is not found to support a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ of increased probability of company failure following the issuance of a going-concern-modified opinion.

The last two articles employ a historical method. Reinstein et al. look at the contributions of a leading U.S. accounting academic-cum practitioner of the 1920s and 1930s, George Husband. This was a volatile period, as noted in the article by Staunton, which addresses the dilemmas over time faced by accounting standards setters (government or private) as they have grappled with the term ‘principles’ in those debates. Returning to Reinstein et al.'s reflections on Husband, they reveal his lasting accomplishments as an opponent of the LIFO method of inventory valuation, and his advocacy of price-level accounting and of the proprietary theory of financial accounting. Husband was one of the most prolific authors in The Accounting Review. Staunton's ‘Multiple Dimensions of Accounting in the Development of GAAP’ is a historical foray showing that the term ‘principles’ has often been used vaguely in debates on the development of accounting standards. The reasons for and consequences of that vagueness are shown to be varied and complex. While debates like the ‘rule- versus principle-based standards’ are set up as two-dimensional, the many dimensions of accounting often allow argument to be easily diverted. The debate/argument thus remains unresolved. For progress to be achieved in the establishment of accounting standards the many dimensions of accounting must be acknowledged and attempts to divert debate minimized. Both Staunton and Reinstein et al. add historical insights to the ideas of the Forum papers on ‘principles vs rules’ that appeared in the June 2007 issue of the journal.

To reinforce the nature of the current and most previous issues of Abacus, the remainder of this editorial draws on material used to prepare an address to Italian PhD students and accounting academics in Rome (September 2007). For that address Graeme Dean reviewed Abacus’ specific submission and publication data for the last year in comparison with data from selected prior years. The address sought to show that, in publishing material on a variety of subject areas, Abacus has persistently provided an international journal outlet for eclectic research in accounting in terms of topic and method. In that context, healthy submission levels persist (Table 1). And they continue to be received from all over the world, with most published issues (three per annum since 1998 and four since 2006) having around 45 per cent of the articles from overseas and 55 per cent from Australasian authors (one of the recent issues had all from overseas authors).

Article submissions for 2007 were consistent with figures, when adjusted for the three issues per year, for the latter half of the 1990s and the first half of the current decade. They are also similar to the average number of submissions for the 1980s, when Abacus was published twice a year. The acceptance rate of 22–25 per cent is similar to many leading international academic accounting journals. Abacus’ international reach is further evidenced by the ‘origin of author’ statistics noted in Table 2.

The data confirm our policy to publish quality papers with a mix of theory and empirical content persists. Papers with an international focus, examining accounting's decision useful role and exhibiting innovative aspects are what we seek.