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A History of Corporate Financial Reporting provides an understanding of the procedures and practices which constitute corporate financial reporting in Britain, at different points of time, and how and why those practices changed and became what they are now. Its particular focus is the external financial reporting practices of joint stock companies. This is worth knowing about given the widely held view that Britain (i) pioneered modern financial reporting, and (ii) played a primary role in the development of both capital markets and professional accountancy. The book makes use of a principal and agent framework to study accounting's past, but one where the failure of managers always to supply the information that users' desire is given full recognition. It is shown that corporate financial reporting did not develop into its current state in a straightforward and orderly fashion. Each era produces different environmental conditions and imposes new demands on accounting. A proper understanding of accounting developments therefore requires a careful examination of the interrelationship between accountants and accounting techniques on the one hand and, on the other, the social and economic context within which changes took place. The book's corporate coverage starts with the legendary East India Company, created in 1600, and continues through the heyday of the statutory trading companies founded to build Britain's canals (commencing in the 1770s) and railways (commencing c.1829) to focus, principally, on the limited liability company fashioned by the Joint Stock Companies Act 1844 and the Limited Liability Act 1855. The story terminates in 2005 when listed companies were required to prepare their consolidated accounts in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards, thus signalling the effective end of British accounting.

We compile a new unit‐record data set of Australian corporate bond issuance, which sheds light on developments in the bond market since the early twentieth century. Reflecting the evolution of the economy, privatisations, and changes in the regulatory landscape the following trends are noteworthy: (i) issuance today is largely by private entities whereas government‐owned corporations dominated historically; (ii) the issuer base has shifted away from non‐financial corporations towards banks, with corporations now raising a large share of funds offshore; and (iii) the investor base has shifted away from direct holdings by households towards holdings through superannuation/managed funds and holdings by non‐residents.

With long-lasting debates, corporate social responsibility concept was from the beginning a high-interest subject to all of the stakeholders of the companies: shareholders, public opinion, employees and governments. Based on studies which demonstrates the socially responsible companies have major financial and image-related benefits, we started researching the roots of the concept "corporate social responsibility". By using qualitative method, hermeneutic perspective, we chose the comprehensive approach of CSR developed by Goodpaster et al. (2005). We analyzed four sides out of five of the concept (economics contributions of companies to society, contextual changing of companies' development and existence environment, Conceptual evolution and dimentions of CSR, perspective of theories in close connection with CSR) and we proposed a definition of what we belive is CSR. Analyzing the pros and cons of accepting the CSR model as stated nowadays, we concluded as follows: Without neglecting the implicit social responsibility of companies towards others (like human beings) – by means of taxes and social charges imposed by law, and without fully accepting the extreme opinion that presents corporations as entities that indirectly hold all the communities' political, social and economic power, companies should strictly follow their economic goal, which implicitly fulfils all the additional requirements imposed to companies by some stakeholders.