ABSTRACT
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and various other governmental and nongovernmental organizations have been expending resources in developing countries for decades to improve the infrastructure of their economies. In recent years, various projects have aimed at reforming the accounting and financial reporting systems of several countries, most notably in Central and Eastern Europe (Kemp and Alexander 1996; Cheney 1990; Rolfe and Doupnik 1995; Jermakowicz and Rinke 1996; Adams and McMillan 1997) and the former Soviet Union (Ichizli and Zacchea 2000), including Russia (Cornish 1999), Uzbekistan (Crallan 1997) and Armenia (McGee 1999b), but also in African countries such as Madagascar (Berry and Holzer 1993). Other countries, including China, have been attempting to reform their accounting and financial reporting system without direct foreign aid or assistance (Tang 2000; Chen, Jubb, and Tran 1997). In some countries, including Bahrain, corporations adopt International Accounting Standards (IAS) even when their government does not force them to do so (Al-Basteki 1995).
