Developed economies all have their own regulatory environment for accounting and financial reporting. This assignment allows you to explore two different regulatory environments of your choice, and to evaluate the theories of regulation that best describe those environments.

This assignment is in two parts, which you will combine into a single report. Each will involve a review of the relevant literature to establish the dominant views involved in each environment. Your conclusion at the end of the report will identify the most important findings for each review.

Part A

Select anytwoof the following countries:

1. Australia
2. United Kingdom
3. India
4. Singapore.

Undertake a literature review foreachof these countries' regulatory environment for financial reporting. For each regulatory environment, find commentary on:

1. The perceived problems of each system
2. How the environment works (who are the major decision makers, what legislation is needed etc.)
3. What is that country's progress towards the adoption of IFRS?

Part B

Analyse each of your selected environments through the lens of Regulatory Capture Theory. To do this, you will have to conduct a literature review that will explain:

1. What Regulatory Capture Theory is and why is might be useful,
2. What characteristics might indicate that a regulatory environment might be "captured".

Conclusion

Use Regulatory Capture Theory to critique each of your selected environments and advise of the extent that these environments might be captured (and by whom), or indeed might not be. If you have detected evidence of some capture, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Support your argument with your observations in Parts A and B.

What to submit

You must submit your assessment in the form of a single report, in the following format:

Executive Summary

Use the executive summary to summarise your topic and the key points of what you found in the literature about your topic. This should be no more than two paragraphs. Professional writers usually write part after they have finished the report.

Introduction

This is not the same as a synopsis. An introduction should be a roadmap to your entire report: what the topic was, where you searched, what you found, what the key points are.

An introduction can take up to half a page. Write this after the literature review and conclusion sections, but before the synopsis.

Report (2,000 words in total - 20 marks)

1. Part A: Comparison of two regulatory environments (1,000 words - 10 marks)
2. Part B: Analysis of each environment using Capture Theory (1,000 words - 10 marks)

Conclusion (500 words on your findings from using Capture Theory - 4 marks)

This wraps up (summarises) the key points of the report. Use this section to conclusively and clearly respond to the requirements of the topic.

In this part you specifically summarise your findings using Regulatory Capture Theory as your guide.

Normally you would not receive marks for your literature review in this part of the assignment, but in this case you are using Capture Theory to make your summary. Therefore you get marks for your scholarship here, too.

Reference List

Place your references here. I expect quite a few. Each reference listed heremustalso have a citation within the text of your literature review. The reverse is also true: every citation of a source within your literature reviewmustpoint to a reference here in your reference list.