Prudent, verifiable, and timely corporate accounting is a bedrock of our modern capitalist system. In recent years, however, the rules that govern corporate accounting have been subtly changed in ways that compromise these core principles, to the detriment of the economy at large. These changes have been driven by the private agendas of certain corporate special interests, aided selectively--and sometimes unwittingly--by arguments from business academia

With Political Standards, Karthik Ramanna develops the notion of "thin political markets" to describe a key problem facing...