Abstract The article focuses on issues related to accounting profession in the U.S. The Federal Trade Commission has investigated the accounting profession for a variety of ingenious rules for restricting competition among its members — barring competitive advertising, restricting the range of financial products members can offer clients and impeding the price competition waged by large firms who undercut the fees charged by smaller firms. These achievements pale, however, compared with the greatest prize of professional unionization — the instigation and preservation of the mandatory audit, whereby, as a result of the 1933-34 Securities Acts, most publicly quoted companies are required to employ a certified public accountant. No other profession can boast a comparable coup on behalf of its members. The sick are not compelled to seek out doctors, and the legally injured are not obliged to consult lawyers. Yet publicly quoted corporations meeting minimal size requirements are forced, by law, to buy the product of the accounting industry.
Tony Tinker (Fri,) studied this question.