For the last 30 years, especially during elections, investors have speculated about the apparent link between stock market behavior and the U.S. presidential election cycle. To the observer, returns seem to be higher during the second half of a president's term than the first.

From business schools to baseball batters, we use rankings to determine who's the best. Investors, too, look to rankings to assess the performance of financial professionals.

Legislative pressure is requiring corporate America to set its financial house in order, creating an uptick in demand for accounting professionals. Business schools respond by retooling accountancy programs for the post-Enron era.

Research team discovers an unintended benefit of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act: Aside from tightening controls on corporate misbehavior, the law creates better board governance which, in turn, improves a corporation's credibility with the market.

During the financial crisis and the resulting recession, companies set tough targets for their CFOs, refusing, in some cases, to give bonuses unless companies reported positive earnings, accounting professor Michal Matejka says.

More American companies, especially start-ups and those in the technology industry, are offering broad-based employee stock options as part of their compensation packages.

For more than a year, the European Union has been in crisis over the huge debts faced by its weakest economies. Cutbacks in social programs and benefits have stirred unrest in those countries, as well as in better-off nations in the Eurozone.

The recession has caused all sorts of difficulties for CFOs: falling earnings, tumbling stock prices and, occasionally, knotty negotiations with lenders. For most of them, it has also brought tougher targets for earning their bonuses.

Finance scholars have long urged corporate managers to hold less cash and assume more debt. Too much cash, the argument went, could make executives lax, encouraging imprudent acquisitions and spendthrift expansions.

While the world's economy has been ailing for almost two years, signs are beginning to point to recovery.