This preamble explains the reasons for the design and composition of my Accounting Theory seminar, which is a three-hour required course in the spring semester of the fifth year of the Master of Accounting Program at Rice University. The enrollment is between 25 and 30 students.
There is no standard format or scope for an Accounting Theory seminar, and I assume that many instructors pattern such seminars after one of the available Accounting Theory textbooks. The authors of two of these textbooks do refer to the names of the major accounting theorists (but sometimes only in footnotes), yet discuss their valuation models only perfunctorily. Almost half of one of the two textbooks' content, and two-thirds of the other's, is given over to explaining the architecture of, and conceptual issues involving, the balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement as well as to an expansive treatment of conceptual issues arising...
