Big Eight Firms and the Accounting Literature: The Falloff in Advocacy Writing

The author marshals evidence that partners in Big Eight firms, as well as the firms themselves, have engaged significantly less in advocacy writing in the accounting literature during the last decade compared with the output of articles and firm publications on controversial topics that appeared in the 1960s. He suggests several likely explanations for this trend in the literature, including the increasing competitiveness of public accounting and the transfer of standards-setting authority from a part-time board in which the Big Eight firms played a major role to the full-time Financial Accounting Standards Board. Other explanatory factors are the litigious climate and congressional oversight.