Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors influencing career intentions toward becoming a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) by students who are studying at the accounting schools in Japan. This paper focused on students' work experience, prior major/s at their undergraduate level, gender, attitude toward the opportunity cost of becoming a CPA and their perceptions of the CPA profession. Design/methodology/approach -The sample comprised students studying at 13 accounting schools in Japan. A questionnaire was given to these students in order to empirically examine the relationship between these influential factors and their career intention, with particular reference to those who intended to pursue a CPA career. Those studying in these accounting schools generally consist of two type of students; those who want to become a CPA and those who merely want to brush up on their accounting skills and do not wish to sit the CPA entrance exams. A total of 349 effective responses were analysed. Findings -Findings indicate that students who have work experience and major in disciplines other than accounting or business are more reluctant to become a CPA. This is in direct contrast to one of the objectives for the CPA reform scheme in Japan, which is to extend the diversity of CPA candidature. Originality/value -This paper is the first study undertaken in Japan to successfully provide a new dimension on the factors that influence career intention of students aspiring to become a CPA.

This paper investigates the issue of whether financial reports appear to convey information on risk on a consistent basis across international capital markets. Data collected from a sample of Japanese financial analysts are compared to previously reported data from U . S.analysts. The results indicate that traditional accounting measures of risk explain substantial variation in the average risk perceptions of financial analysts in both the U.S. and Japan; however, while accounting risk measures were found to explain significant variation in expost beta for the U.S. sample, this was not found to be the case for the Japanese sample.The implications of these cross-national differences and similarities are discussed.If corporate financial reporting is to be adequately supportive of investment decision making, then it must provide information useful to the formation of investor risk and return assessments. Whether this is in fact the case, however, has been the subject of considerable interest and speculation. Ronen and Sorter (1972), for example, criticize accounting reports by suggesting that accounting information does not explicitly deal with considerations of risk.Accounting information may, however, assist decision makers in the formation of risk assessments in an implicit manner. The findings of Beaver, Kettler, and Scholes (1970), Eskew (1979) and Elgers (1980), for example, suggest that this is in fact the case. They observed that accountingdetermined measures of risk are associated with market price-based risk measures.This study also investigates the relationship between market risk and accounting risk, but attempts to extend this consideration in two ways.* The constructive comments and suggestions of two anonymous reviewers are acknowledged. All errors remain the responsibility of the authors.

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