Characterizing Accounting Research

Characterizing Accounting Research
Derek K. Oler, Mitchell J. Oler, and Christopher J. Skousen

SYNOPSIS: In response to concerns over the viability of the academic discipline of
accounting, we investigate trends in accounting research by examining papers pub-
lished in six top accounting journals from 1960 to 2007. We use citations made by
accounting papers as a proxy for their antecedent ideas and examine trends in cita-
tions, topics, and methodologies, in aggregate and by journal. Our results suggest that
the growing body of accounting research draws increasingly from both nance and
economics. Financial accounting topics and archival methodologies are becoming more
dominant over time relative to other topics and methodologies, although these trends
vary by journal. Though most concerns we discuss are recent, we nd that the situation
today is the result of trends set in motion decades ago with an explicit decision by
inuential researchers to move the discipline from a normative perspective to a positive
perspective. Given its current state, accounting research may be broadly characterized
as research into the effect of economic events on the process of summarizing, analyz-
ing, verifying, and reporting standardized nancial information, and on the effects of
reported information on economic events.
INTRODUCTION
A
ccounting research has emerged as a literature that draws from and adds to a larger body
of work dealing primarily with businesses and their interactions with society at large,
often through capital markets. Several researchers have identied threats to accounting as
an academic discipline, and some question its future viability. Others have noted the gap that often
exists between academics and practitioners in accounting. We offer an alternative approach to
examining these threats and concerns, and an approach to characterizing accounting research, by
1 examining its antecedent seminal ideas, proxied by the papers cited by research published in
six top accounting journals; 2 examining the general topics covered; and 3 examining the
general methodologies used. We summarize trends in citations, topics, and methodologies from
1960 to 2007, both in aggregate and by journal. We conclude by proposing a characterization of
accounting research based on our observations.
Derek K. Oler is an Associate Professor at Texas Tech University, Mitchell J. Oler is an Assistant Professor
at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and Christopher J. Skousen is an Assistant Professor at
Utah State University.
The authors thank Tom Dyckman, Michael Gibbins, Bill Kinney, Kenny Reynolds, Stephen Zeff, Anthony Hopwood, Dana
Hermanson, two anonymous reviewers, and participants at the 2007 BYU Accounting Research Symposium and the 2009
American Accounting Association Annual Meeting for helpful comments on prior versions of this paper. All remaining
errors are our own. We also thank Laura Oler for her programming assistance. We are grateful to Kevin Federico, Robert
Brandt, Kara Brandt, Monte Searle, and Brian Watson for their research assistance.
Accounting Horizons American Accounting Association
Vol. 24, No. 4 DOI: 10.2308/acch.2010.24.4.635
2010
pp. 635670
Submitted: March 2010
Accepted: April 2010
Published Online: December 2010
Corresponding author: Derek K. Oler
Email: derek.oler@ttu.edu
635
Researchers have raised signicant concerns about the viability of accounting research as an
academic discipline. Fogarty and Markarian 2007 argue that the academic accounting profession
is in decline because there are shrinking numbers of accounting researchers at the assistant and
associate professor levels. Their results are consistent with Plumlee et al. 2005 and Leslie
2008. One implication of these studies is that, ceteris paribus, fewer accounting research papers
will be published over time as the number of researchers declines.
Another concern, raised by Hopwood 2007, is that accounting research is becoming more
insular and self-referential also see, Biehl et al. 2006. This concern suggests that the proportion
of citations from other elds will decrease over time because more recent accounting research
ignores new ideas from other literatures. We examine trends in the relative proportion of ideas in
accounting research being drawn from other disciplines to determine the extent to which account-
ing seems to be becoming more insular. Rayburn 2005, 2006 expresses concern over the increas-
ing dominance of nancial accounting research topics in academic journals, and Tuttle and Dillard
2007 nd a strong trend in publications in The Accounting Review toward more nancial ac-
counting papers and fewer papers on other topics. We investigate whether this trend extends to
other journals. Specically, we examine Accounting, Organizations and Society AOS, Contem-
porary Accounting Research CAR, Journal of Accounting and Economics JAE, Journal of
Accounting Research JAR, Review of Accounting Studies RAST, and The Accounting Review
TAR. These journals are currently and commonly viewed as top-tier publications at research-
intensive U.S. schools. Two of these journals, AOS and CAR, are not based in the United States
and publish a greater proportion of papers by non-U.S. academics. To enhance comparisons
between our journals, we exclude papers without at least one U.S. author.
Accounting research intersects with a number of neighboring disciplines, primarily nance,
economics, psychology, and management. Building on Zeff 1996, we classify citation sources
into eight categories: accounting, nance, economics, psychology, management, statistics, other
academic journals, and other citations i.e., books, professional journals, working papers, popular
media, legal cases, etc.. We classify the topics covered by accounting papers into six categories:
nancial accounting, managerial accounting, auditing, tax, governance, and other topics.
1
We
classify the research methodologies used into seven categories: archival, experimental, eld study,
review, survey, theoretical often referred to as analytical, and normative.
2
These are broad cat-
egories, but we believe they are adequately descriptive while remaining reasonably digestible.
3
In
cases where a paper addresses multiple topics, or uses multiple methodologies, we select the
primary topic and primary methodology for our classications. We provide an expanded descrip-
tion of our categories in the Appendix.
Our results indicate that the nature of accounting research has changed signicantly over the
past 48 years. The most radical shift has been from the dominance of normative research in the
1
Prior research in auditing and management accounting may also be considered governance research; however, we dene
governance research here as research relating to the overall corporate management, as opposed to a rms system of
internal controls. While some governance papers occurred prior to the Gompers et al. 2003 paper, we note that most
governance research builds on their work. Our selection of governance is also an example of a newer hot topic that
is essentially borrowed from economics.
2
We note that our terms for methodology are not parallel: archival, experimental, and eld study methodologies are
examples of positive research the study of what is, and theoretical work is similar the study of what is, from the
perspective of mathematical logic, although one could also consider theoretical work to be normative as well. Norma-
tive research deals with what ought to be see Keynes, 1891, 34. Review is not really a methodology, but rather a
summation and synthesis of prior work.
3
Our selection of topics and methodologies, while consistent with prior work, is open to criticism. For example, Abbott
2004 provides a taxonomy of 36 different methodologies, compared to our seven. However, increasing our categories
has the adverse effect of increasing the complexity and size of the paper, making it more difcult to group the thousands
of papers we examine into tractable categories.
636 Oler, Oler, and Skousen
Accounting Horizons December 2010
American Accounting Association
1960s to positive research from the mid-1970s onward. This shift seems to continue to guide the
trajectory of accounting research today. The total number of papers published by the top account-
ing journals has increased dramatically from 1960 to 2007, mostly because of new journals being
inaugurated and later commonly accepted as A journals. We also break out paper counts by
individual journal, and nd that research production overall has not decreased. Accounting papers
currently draw just under 50 percent of their antecedent ideas from other prior accounting work
Table 1, and this ratio has remained consistent since the mid-1990s. Borrowing from nance and
economics has been slowly but steadily increasing. Financial accounting research has remained
the dominant topic of research, and is becoming increasingly so. Tuttle and Dillard 2007 nd that
this trend occurs in TAR; we show that the trend extends to other top journals except for AOS and
CAR.
Papers in our six accounting journals indicate a different mix of citations, topics, and meth-
odologies. For example, RAST papers cite other accounting papers 50 percent of the time on
average from its 1996 inception to 2007, and cite psychology papers only 0.2 percent of the time,
compared with AOS papers, which cite accounting papers 30 percent of the time and psychology
papers only 9.4 percent of the time. Differences in citations reect signicant differences in topic
and methodology: from inception to 2007, 22 percent of CARs papers focus on audit issues,
compared to 3.8 percent of RASTs. Papers dealing with nancial accounting make up an increas-
ing proportion of the total papers published in almost all journals from their inception through
today except for AOS and CAR. In terms of methodology, archival research is becoming more
dominant in all journals.
Our results have several implications. First, although the number of accounting A journals
and the number of total accounting publications have increased signicantly over time, when our
results are considered in conjunction with Plumlee et al. 2005 and Leslie 2008, warning signs
emerge. The increase in output does not appear to be attributable to a general increase in research-
ers, but rather to 1 a slight increase in researchers at doctoral-granting schools, and 2 a
signicant increase in the amount of time spent on research Leslie 2008. But faculty cannot
indenitely increase their time devoted to research. The large unmet demand for auditing and
taxation Ph.D.s noted by Plumlee et al. 2005 corroborates our nding that the proportion of
auditing and taxation papers has decreased in the 2000s relative to prior decades. This decrease in
the number of publications and researchers in audit and tax is especially disconcerting to auditing
rms, who look to academics to supply new generations of CPAs Solomon 2008.
The Final Report of the Treasurys Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession also
reects concern about the adequacy of both the near- and long-term supply of doctoral faculty
given the anticipated pace of faculty retirements Levitt and Nicolaisen 2008, especially for audit
and tax. The recent AICPA Accounting Doctoral Scholars Program announced in July 2008
should help to counteract this trend by encouraging and funding CPAs who wish to obtain Ph.D.s
and pursue auditing or tax.
Over time, citations from nance and economics have increased, suggesting that accounting
research is drawing closer to these related disciplines and moving away from audit and tax. This
is consistent with the shift in accounting research from primarily normative research in the 1960s
to positive research that uses methods from nance, economics, and other established academic
disciplines Granof and Zeff 2008. Citations from psychology, statistics, and management are
relatively low in the 2000s when compared to prior years. The increasing dominance of nancial
accounting research is also consistent with the observations of Tuttle and Dillard 2007 and
Plumlee et al. 2005. It is important to note that the selection of papers published in any journal
is jointly determined by the authors who determine the topic, methodology, and where to submit
Characterizing Accounting Research 637
TABLE 1
Proportion of Citations Made by Papers Published in Top Accounting Journals
a
Year Acctg. Fin. Econ. Psych. Stats. Mgnt.
Other Acad.
Jrnls.
Other
Citations
Papers
with No
Citations
Total
Number
of Papers
1960 29.7% 1.9% 1.3% 0.0% 0.0% 2.3% 4.6% 60.3% 15 57
1961 31.2% 2.5% 1.1% 0.0% 2.3% 1.7% 1.1% 60.1% 16 60
1962 24.2% 0.8% 2.1% 0.1% 0.0% 0.8% 0.8% 71.2% 20 70
1963 27.5% 1.5% 1.6% 0.2% 0.1% 2.5% 10.3% 56.4% 14 88
1964 27.7% 3.8% 2.6% 0.4% 1.0% 2.7% 10.9% 50.9% 17 93
1965 29.7% 0.7% 1.6% 0.0% 0.4% 2.6% 5.6% 59.4% 10 72
1966 28.1% 2.1% 2.5% 0.0% 1.4% 2.6% 8.0% 55.3% 16 87
1967 33.0% 4.7% 2.7% 0.3% 2.4% 4.9% 5.2% 46.7% 18 80
1968 42.7% 4.3% 1.5% 0.1% 0.7% 3.9% 3.0% 43.8% 12 90
1969 41.1% 2.5% 2.7% 2.0% 2.0% 5.3% 4.1% 40.3% 8 95
1970 40.0% 5.9% 3.3% 0.6% 1.5% 5.3% 2.7% 40.6% 4 83
1971 25.4% 6.4% 3.5% 1.5% 0.7% 4.5% 4.1% 54.0% 6 87
1972 30.1% 6.2% 3.8% 3.4% 3.1% 3.5% 2.8% 47.1% 5 86
1973 36.7% 6.4% 2.6% 2.5% 0.9% 3.7% 1.6% 45.7% 1 73
1974 34.2% 5.7% 6.5% 3.0% 1.8% 1.6% 2.8% 44.5% 5 68
1975 37.6% 6.7% 3.1% 3.6% 1.4% 5.2% 0.1% 42.3% 1 62
1976 31.7% 7.6% 4.8% 6.0% 0.6% 7.9% 0.7% 40.6% 4 87
1977 34.7% 5.6% 4.4% 6.3% 0.8% 9.8% 1.0% 37.3% 3 96
1978 35.3% 11.7% 5.0% 2.1% 1.3% 5.5% 0.2% 38.8% 2 79
1979 31.6% 8.2% 6.8% 3.8% 0.6% 4.9% 0.3% 43.7% 2 89
1980 35.1% 8.2% 7.7% 6.1% 0.2% 4.7% 0.4% 37.6% 1 90
1981 25.6% 10.0% 8.1% 6.7% 0.4% 5.8% 0.7% 42.6% 2 97
1982 37.6% 7.8% 5.2% 6.4% 1.2% 3.4% 0.4% 38.0% 1 113
1983 34.0% 8.8% 6.1% 6.3% 0.6% 7.4% 0.4% 36.3% 1 86
1984 36.3% 10.4% 5.6% 5.3% 1.0% 3.5% 0.4% 37.6% 0 107
1985 35.9% 8.6% 9.8% 3.7% 0.9% 3.2% 0.6% 37.4% 4 121
1986 44.0% 8.4% 6.2% 2.5% 1.0% 6.1% 1.6% 30.2% 0 99
1987 39.2% 8.7% 9.4% 2.5% 0.9% 2.1% 0.6% 36.7% 0 101
1988 44.3% 6.9% 7.9% 3.3% 0.5% 5.5% 0.9% 30.6% 0 108
1989 43.3% 9.0% 7.8% 3.9% 0.2% 1.7% 0.7% 33.5% 1 116
1990 39.8% 9.7% 10.4% 2.6% 0.6% 3.2% 0.8% 32.9% 3 152
1991 39.8% 9.3% 10.8% 2.1% 0.3% 1.9% 1.6% 34.2% 5 115
1992 42.2% 8.4% 7.7% 3.2% 1.3% 3.1% 1.0% 33.0% 2 120
1993 37.9% 10.7% 8.9% 2.9% 3.2% 2.1% 1.0% 33.2% 0 122
1994 42.2% 8.7% 8.2% 1.5% 2.8% 1.2% 1.7% 33.7% 3 121
1995 38.9% 6.6% 13.3% 2.3% 2.6% 3.6% 1.4% 31.2% 0 119
1996 45.7% 8.0% 7.7% 1.3% 1.8% 1.1% 1.0% 33.4% 1 131
1997 47.9% 7.9% 4.7% 2.4% 0.3% 1.6% 0.6% 34.5% 7 127
1998 44.7% 7.6% 8.3% 1.0% 0.2% 1.2% 2.4% 34.5% 2 119
1999 49.1% 9.5% 10.0% 1.6% 0.0% 1.9% 1.0% 26.8% 2 152
2000 45.5% 10.0% 8.4% 2.0% 0.2% 2.1% 0.5% 31.3% 0 118
2001 48.1% 8.2% 6.0% 2.2% 0.1% 1.8% 0.2% 33.3% 1 125
2002 48.4% 11.2% 8.0% 1.5% 0.1% 1.8% 0.3% 28.7% 0 171
2003 49.9% 13.2% 7.6% 1.2% 0.2% 1.1% 0.7% 26.1% 1 173
2004 48.9% 13.7% 8.3% 1.2% 0.0% 2.3% 0.8% 24.8% 1 157
(continued on next page)
their paper, reviewers, and editors who determine which papers to accept and publish based on
the papers that are submitted. Thus, our research should not be interpreted as a criticism of the
editorial choices of particular journals.
Another important caveat is that we do not consider all accounting journals. Researchers
specializing in tax or audit will likely place some of their work in topical journals such as the
Journal of the American Tax Association or Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory. However,
these are not generally accepted as A publications in top U.S. schools. Researching academics,
especially those currently untenured, recognize that a publication in one of our selected journals is
very helpful, and often essential, to attaining tenure. Our choice of six top accounting journals
implicitly assumes that the choices made by submitting authors, reviewers, and editors of these
journals reect a representative sample of accounting research.
4
Based on our observations, we construct a possible characterization of accounting research:
Accounting research is research into the effect of economic events on the process of summarizing,
analyzing, verifying, and reporting standardized nancial information, and on the effects of re-
ported information on economic events.
This characterization is necessarily broad, reecting the diversity of papers published over the past
40 years. We also emphasize that this characterization is a reection of what has been published as
accounting research, and not necessarily what accounting research should be.
Our results are useful to researchers in deciding where to submit their work. Students, ad-
ministrators of Ph.D. programs in accounting, and accounting professionals may wish to use our
results in making decisions on resource allocations, especially toward encouraging and expanding
audit and tax research. Accounting Ph.D. students may benet from our long-term overview of
accounting research and how it has changed over time. Finally, our results are also useful for
4
We also note that our selection of journals is backlledthat is, we include all prior issues of newer journals, even
before they came to be commonly accepted as A journals. Because the inclusion of a journal on an A list is
determined by individual schools at different times, we cannot provide a denitive date as to when AOS, CAR, JAE,
JAR, and RAST became A journals we assume that TAR has always been considered an A journal.
TABLE 1 (continued)
Year Acctg. Fin. Econ. Psych. Stats. Mgnt.
Other Acad.
Jrnls.
Other
Citations
Papers
with No
Citations
Total
Number
of Papers
2005 46.9% 14.3% 7.2% 2.5% 0.1% 1.8% 0.6% 26.5% 0 144
2006 48.3% 13.5% 8.5% 1.4% 0.1% 1.2% 1.3% 25.7% 1 165
2007 47.2% 14.5% 8.5% 2.5% 0.3% 2.8% 1.0% 23.0% 0 143
Total Papers 218 5,114
Wtd. Avg. 40.2% 8.5% 6.8% 2.5% 0.8% 3.1% 1.6% 36.4%
a
This table shows the proportionate number of citations made by top accounting journals Accounting, Organizations and
Society, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research,
Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review from 1960 to 2007 for papers with at least one U.S. author.
Proportions are calculated based on the total citations listed per paper. Other Academic Journals represents an
aggregate of remaining academic citations from law, sociology, education, health, and miscellaneous disciplines. Other
Citations represents an aggregate of remaining citations including working papers, books, popular media, and profes-
sional journals. The weighted average is calculated based on the number of papers published in a given year.
accounting practitioners in understanding the pressure on the education of the next generation of
auditors and tax professionals, especially since it seems more difcult for audit/tax professors to
publish their research in the top accounting journals.
Levitt and Nicolaisen 2008 note that there is an underdeveloped bond between the account-
ing profession and accounting academia. Personal interactions between the authors and accounting
rm employees including their former supervisors and co-workers in accounting rms conrm
that the typical CPA rm employee has a limited understanding of exactly what accounting
academics do. Our overview of academic publications, and our proposed denition of accounting
research, should help to alleviate this problem and to encourage additional discourse between
accounting professionals and academics.
In the next section we expand on our motivation and review the prior literature. In the third
section we review our data and methodology. In the fourth section we present our results and
propose a current characterization of accounting research, and in the fth section we conclude.
BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION
Some papers are intuitively accounting e.g., Required Disclosures in Financial Reports,
Schipper 2007, but others less clearly so e.g., Tax Benets as a Source of Merger Premiums
in Acquisitions of Private Corporations, Erickson and Wang 2007; Industry Product Market
Competition and Managerial Incentives, Karuna 2007; Measuring Customer Relationship
Value: The Role of Switching Cost, Dikolli et al. 2007. One heuristic used by many researchers
in deciding if their paper is accounting, and therefore where to submit their work, is to count
citations: if the majority of citations are from accounting journals, then it is an accounting paper.
This heuristic clearly works for the Schipper paper above 42 out of 44 citations from academic
journals are from other accounting journals, but less so for Erickson and Wang only 9 out of 21
citations are from accounting journals. Beavers 1968 seminal work in 1968 cites only 3 ac-
counting papers out of 17 total citations: according to the citations-count heuristic, The Informa-
tion Content of Earnings Announcements is a nance paper. This ad hoc analysis suggests that
the citations-count heuristic alone cannot adequately dene accounting research.
A simple approach to describing and conceptualizing accounting research is to look at papers
published in top accounting journals. We look at six top journals AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, RAST,
and TAR for U.S. schools because a publication in one of these journals represents a highly sought
after achievement that is required for tenure at top institutions and can often guarantee tenure at
lower-tier institutions.
5
Accounting journals do not explicitly dene the term accounting research. TARs editorial
policy is to publish articles reporting results of accounting research from any accounting-
related subject. JARs rst issue states that the journal will be devoted to reporting the results of
research activities in all areas of accounting Shultz and Caine 1963. The inaugural issue of
RAST describes its mission as to provide an outlet for signicant academic research in account-
ing where research must contribute to the discipline of accounting. Similarly, the inaugural
issue of AOS discusses the need for research into understanding the way in which all forms of
accounting information are actually used Hopwood 1976, 2, suggesting that accounting re-
search could consider individuals response to accounting information. The lack of an explicit
denition of accounting research does not suggest sloppy thinking or laziness; rather, it suggests
that accounting research is hard to dene. Hopwood 2007 argues that accounting research has
5
An elite university will often require six top-tier publications for someone to have a likely chance at tenure, and many
other research-intensive schools will require two to four top-tier publications. Lower-tier schools have reduced tenure
requirements, but typically pay less Carcello 2007.
changed over time; for example, pre-JAR 1963 and pre-Ball and Brown 1968, accounting
research was largely normative i.e., focusing on how economic events should be accounted for,
but afterward positive research became more dominant and accounting research came to embrace
the consequences of accounting in wider institutional settings focusing more on the effect of
accounting information on economic events.
6
Thus, looking at the effect of net income on stock
prices seems to have become accounting research, where previously it was not. With Ball and
Brown, the contemporaneous shift toward positive research discussed by Reiter and Williams
2002, and the explosion of archival research see Kothari 2001 accounting researchers seem to
have partially annexed a literature that was previously in the realm of nance.
7
Our paper seeks to provide a context within which to evaluate threats to and concerns over
the profession, as well as an overview of accounting research, by examining prior work. We
assume that papers published in top accounting journals are a faithful representation of the ac-
counting literature, and that the prior work they cite is an effective proxy for their antecedents.
8
That is, the papers cited by accounting research in top journals can give us insight into where
seminal ideas in accounting are coming from and can help us characterize what accounting re-
search is. Insights from investigating citations and trends in citations from published accounting
research will also help us to evaluate threats to the profession identied by various researchers.
Threats to the Academic Accounting Profession
Fogarty and Markarian 2007 recount changes in accounting faculty numbers from 1982 to
2002 and conclude that a decline in the number of assistant and associate accounting professors
over that period indicates that the future of the academic discipline is in doubt. Leslie 2008 nds
a similar decline. Buchheit et al. 2002, Swanson 2004, and Swanson et al. 2007 report that
accounting has the lowest proportion of faculty who publish in a top journal.
9
These results seem
consistent with Plumlee et al. 2005, Fogarty and Markarian 2007, and Leslie 2008, because if
it is more difcult for accounting researchers to obtain publications needed for tenure, then fewer
potential accounting Ph.D. students may consider the eld as a viable career. Plumlee et al. 2005
report expected shortages of accounting researchers for 20052008, especially in audit and tax
and report no indication that this trend will reverse in the near futuresee also Levitt and
Nicolaisen 2008. If the number of active researchers decreases and acceptance rates at journals
remain the same, then we should expect to see a corresponding drop in accounting papers pub-
lished especially in audit and tax. This expectation is corroborated by Carcello 2007, who notes
that many accounting Ph.D. programs today welcome students with strong backgrounds in eco-
nomics and nance as opposed to students with a professional background as a CPA. Such
students are more likely to pursue a Ph.D. in nancial accounting as it is closer to their educa-
tional foundations and less likely pursue a Ph.D. in auditing or tax. Additionally, accounting
Ph.D.s granted to individuals with no practical experience in accounting can only widen the gulf
between academics and professional accountants.
Another concern, perhaps best articulated by Hopwood 2007, is that accounting research has
grown more insular and less innovative over time. Williams 1985 raises similar concerns. If
correct, this concern should manifest itself in a reduction of citations from other literatures over
time in accounting research.
6
Interestingly, Ball and Brown 1968 was rejected by TAR as a non-accounting paper Dyckman and Zeff 1984.
7
This is a two-way street in that papers potentially considered accounting have also appeared in nance journals.
8
Of course, citations do not have a one-to-one correspondence with ideas.
9
Swanson et al.s 2007 set of accounting journals consists of CAR, JAE, JAR, and TAR. Buchheit et al. 2002 consider
JAE, JAR, and TAR from accounting as well as top-tier journals from other business disciplines.
Diversity within accounting research is also a concern e.g., Rayburn 2005, 2006; Tuttle and
Dillard 2007; Granof and Zeff 2008. If one topic or methodology becomes overly dominant to the
detriment of other topics or methodologies, then the entire profession may suffer, as researchers
focus on a shrinking set of acceptable papers. Granof and Zeff 2008 note that developments in
the 1960s, including a desire by accounting researchers to obtain more academic respectability
from peers in other elds, have led to the unintended consequence of interesting accounting
questions now being ignored because they cannot be addressed through currently accepted quan-
titative and theoretical analysis. Their work is consistent with Tuttle and Dillard 2007, who nd
that the eld of academic accounting research is becoming more homogenized as it matures.
Specically, they nd that the proportion of nonnancial accounting papers published in TAR has
decreased signicantly from 1976 to 2006, and they nd corroborating trends in papers winning
the American Accounting Association Competitive Manuscript Award, downloads of working
papers from the Social Sciences Research Network SSRN website, and accounting dissertations
awarded. We investigate whether their ndings extend to ve other top accounting journals.
Related Prior Research
Similar to our paper, McRae 1974 uses citations as a proxy for information transfers be-
tween disciplines. He examines the proportion of citations in both academic and professional
accounting journals from 1968 and 1969, and nds that accounting journals draw mostly from
other business elds and also from economics and law.
10
Hofstedt 1976 uses citations to compare
and contrast behavioral accounting research with capital markets research. Dyckman and Zeff
1984 examine citations as part of their review on the impact of JAR on academic accounting
research. They also note that the pace of interdisciplinary borrowing by accounting research
increased in the 1960s and 1970s. Brown and Gardner 1985 use citations to assess the impact of
TAR, JAR, JAE, and AOS on CAR from 1976 to 1982.
Carnaghan et al. 1994 prole CAR over its rst 10 years. Similar to our approach, they
provide a breakdown of papers by topic and methodology.
11
We extend their work by time frame
and also by journal. Similarly, Stone 2002 provides a breakdown of accounting publications by
method and topic from 1989 to 1998 for AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, and TAR, and nds that the
dominant topic and methodology over that period was nancial accounting and archival,
respectively.
12
We extend Stone in both years and journals covered. Buchheit et al. 2002 com-
pare the proportionate publication rates for accounting, nance, management, and marketing, and
nd that the proportionate number of accounting faculty publishing in top accounting journals is
signicantly lower than the corresponding rates for other disciplines.
13
More recently, Wakeeld
2008 uses citations to estimate the relative inuence of 22 accounting research journals from
2000 to 2006. She nds the most inuential journals are JAR, TAR, JAE, AOS, and CAR, respec-
tively, with RAST as the 9th most inuential journal see also Lowe and Locke 2005; Bonner et al.
2006.
We extend a number of prior studies by examining a much longer time series of data and by
expanding the set of accounting journals investigated. However, we do much more than merely
extend prior work: We provide insight into long-term trends in top accounting journals, and
ultimately help to inform the debate on the trajectory of accounting research and the status of the
profession.
10
Within the general heading of business his largest grouping is other, which unfortunately is not broken down further.
His next largest business subcategory is nance.
11
Their specic classications for topic and methodology are also similar to our own.
12
As with Carnaghan et al. 1994, Stones categories of topic and methodology are similar to ours.
13
Their results are corroborated by Swanson 2004 and Swanson et al. 2007.
DATA AND METHODOLOGY
We review and collect data on all articles published in six top accounting journals: AOS, CAR,
JAR, JAE, RAST, and TAR.
14
We exclude letters, committee reports, book reviews, notes, and other
articles not related to research.
15
We collect data as far back as 1960 for TAR i.e., back to volume
35, and to the journal inauguration date for the other ve JAR, 1963; AOS, 1976; JAE, 1979;
CAR, 1984; RAST, 1996.
16
Although we include non-U.S. journals AOS and CAR, our primary
focus is on the state of accounting research in the United States. Therefore, we restrict our analysis
to papers with at least one U.S. author except for our analysis on total papers published over time,
where we plot total papers versus papers with at least one U.S. author.
We classify citations into eight major categories: accounting, nance, economics, psychology,
management, statistics, other academic journals, and other citations i.e., books, professional jour-
nals, working papers, popular media, legal cases, etc..
17
An alternative approach would be to
exclude nonacademic journal citations, but this would preclude our comparison of citations going
back to 1960, since many early articles did not cite other academic journals few academic
journals existed at the time. We include a large number of items in other citations, because
books and working papers are more difcult to classify e.g., should a book on business valuation
be classied as accounting or nance?, and because of the diversity of other items cited e.g.,
professional journals, court cases, websites, etc.. A few papers, mostly in the 1960s and 1970s,
make no citations at all, and we exclude these papers from our citations analysis but not from our
analysis of topic and methodology.
18
We classify papers by topic using six categories: nancial accounting, managerial accounting,
auditing, tax, governance, and other topics which captures a variety of topics, including educa-
tion, research methodology issues, and history. Finally, we also classify papers by methodology:
archival, experimental, eld study, review, survey, theoretical, and normative i.e., research argu-
ing over what should beand often advocating a particular accounting treatmentas opposed to
positive research. See the Appendix for further description.
Because we examine a 48year time trend of changes in citations, topics, and methodologies,
we add information on signicant historical events affecting accounting. Our timeline is admit-
tedly ad hoc, necessarily brief, and considers the creation of new academic journals, the introduc-
tion of accounting and nancial databases, changes in major accounting institutions, and publica-
tions of seminal research.
19
RESULTS
Table 1 presents our results for proportionate citations by literature from 1960 to 2007. The
period from 1960 to 1966 is characterized by relatively low proportionate citations from account-
ing or other academic elds and very high proportionate citations from books, legal cases, court
14
We include RAST in our set of journals because its rapid rise of inuence makes it representative of newer trends in
accounting research. Our informal polling among academics suggests that some schools view CAR as superior to RAST,
and others consider RAST to be superior to CAR.
15
For example, TAR featured articles sectioned under Teachers Clinic and Education Research headings until 1985,
and we exclude these articles.
16
We also include discussion papers, and classify them in the same topic and methodology as the paper they discuss unless
clearly warranted otherwise for example, a discussion paper on theoretical work that uses archival data to test the
works implications.
17
For simplicity, we refer to these areas as categories; however, we recognize that this is a coarse categorization.
Economics, psychology, and mathematics may be more accurately described as disciplines; accounting, nance, statis-
tics, and management may be more accurately described as applied elds.
18
The listing of journal classications is available from the authors.
19
For selecting seminal accounting papers, we use the top four accounting papers as of 1992 listed by Brown 1996, plus
Feltham and Ohlson 1995 and Sloan 1996.
cases, and other sources, reecting the practitioner-oriented early years of the discipline. However,
starting with 1967, the proportionate citations in accounting papers from accounting journals
begins to increase signicantly.
20
At the same time, citations from nance, economics, and man-
agement also begin to increase. For the most part these trends continue, but one exception is that
citations from the management literature reached a high point of 9.8 percent in 1977 and have
reverted back to early 1960s levels in subsequent years.
Figure 1 plots the same results in graphical form alongside our historical timeline.
21
To avoid
clutter, we show only the top three categories accounting, nance, and economics. The increase
in accounting citations appears to have been precipitated by the launch of JAR in 1963 and the
origination of CRSP and Compustat in 1964. Accounting citations accounted for between 30 and
40 percent of citations between 1972 and 1985 other than one exception in 1981, increased from
1986 to 2003, and have tapered off slightly since then. Citations from nance and economics have
increased steadily from 1960 to 2007, with a few spikes e.g., 1978 for nance, contemporaneous
with the publication of Watts and Zimmerman 1978, and a spike in economics citations in 1995
contemporaneous with the publication of Feltham and Ohlson 1995.
22
Citations from nance
research reach their highest point in 2007, at 14.5 percent.
Overall, these results suggest that 1 current accounting research has a considerable founda-
tion from which to draw, and if accounting has been growing more insular over time, the level of
insularity appears to have peaked in 2003; 2 accounting research in general appears to be
drawing closer to nance and economics, but even by 2007, combined citations from nance and
economics represent just under 25 percent of total citations. These trends are consistent with the
rise of positive research, which has its roots in economics and nance.
Figure 2 plots the aggregate number of papers published by year in our accounting journals,
with the same timeline as in Figure 1. These results indicate that the number of accounting papers
published has increased signicantly since 1982 even though Fogarty and Markarian 2007 and
Leslie 2008 report a drop in accounting researchers. The increase is not monotonic for example,
there was a decrease from 1968 to 1975, but the upward trend from 1975 to 2007 is clear and
appears to be associated with the introduction of new major journals. This apparent disconnect
between our results on publications and prior work on the number of researchers can be explained
by two factors: First, Leslie 2008 reports a slight increase in accounting researchers at doctoral-
granting schools although they also report a signicant drop in researchers at four-year non-
doctoral schools. As faculty at doctoral-granting schools are more likely to be research active
because of higher research budgets and because of reduced teaching loads, the decrease in the
number of researchers may not translate directly into a decrease in the number of publications.
Second, Leslie 2008 also nds that the number of hours spent on research reported by accounting
faculty has increased by 52 percent from 1993 to 2004, suggesting that an increase in output-per-
faculty is compensating for a decrease in the number of faculty. A breakout not provided by
individual journal reveals inconsistent trends in the number of papers published by year across the
journals, with TAR, JAR, and AOS declining over time while CAR and RAST are increasing.
Table 2, Panel A, examines citations sorted by research topic. The vast majority of papers fall
into nancial accounting 2,577, over three times the number published in managerial accounting,
the next closest topic. Different topics draw from somewhat different categories. Auditing and
20
We also note that, with the inauguration of JAR, proportionate citations to Other Citations mainly books and court
cases begin to decrease in 1963.
21
We use several acronyms to conserve space. EMH stands for the efcient market hypothesis, WRDS stands for
Wharton Research Data Services offered by the University of Pennsylvania, and SOX stands for the Sarbanes-Oxley
Act of 2002.
22
However, given the ad hoc nature of our timeline, we do not provide evidence on causality.
nancial accounting draw proportionately more from prior accounting research than from other
categories, at 44 percent for auditing and 43 percent for nancial accounting; however, auditing
draws the most from psychology at 5.1 percent.
The newest topic, corporate governance and control, draws the least from accounting and the
most from economics consistent with the seminal paper in that eld, Gompers et al. 2003,
published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, as well as substantially from nance. Mana-
gerial accounting draws signicantly from economics, but relatively little from nance.
When broken out by topic and decade, Panels B to G, the results suggest a strong trend toward
more accounting citations as accounting researchers take ownership of research streams and build
on prior accounting papers in the area. Financial accounting, auditing, tax, governance, and other
topics all show increased borrowing from nance, while managerial accounting has decreased its
borrowing from nance. Borrowing from economics also increased from decade to decade across
FIGURE 1
Proportion of Citations Made by TopAccounting Journals
50.0%
60.0%
40.0%
f
C
i
t
a
t
i
o
n
s
A ti
20.0%
30.0%
P
r
o
p
o
r
t
i
o
n
o
fAccounting
Finance
Economics
10.0%
0.0%
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
1963 JAR
Launched
1968 Ball
& Brown
19 0
1973 FASB
replaces APB
1978 Watts &
1979 JAE
Launched
1995 Feltham
& Ohlson
1998 WRDS
Launched
1985
Healy
1987
1964 Compustat
Launched
1970 EMH
Articulated by
Eugene Fama
1978 Watts &
Zimmerman
1984 CAR
Launched
1996 Sloan;
RAST
Launched
2002 SOX
Passed
1976 AOS
Launched
1987
Hopwood 1960 CRSP
Launched
This gure shows the proportionate number of citations made by top accounting journals (AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR,
RAST, and TAR) from 1960 to 2007 for papers with at least one U.S. author. Proportions are calculated based on
the total citations listed in the paper. For brevity, only citations from accounting, nance, and economics are
shown. CRSP refers to the Chicago Center for Research into Stock Price, EMH refers to the Efcient Market
Hypothesis, FASB refers to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, APB refers to the Accounting Principles
Board, WRDS refers to Wharton Research Data Services, and SOX refers to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
most topics from the 1960s through to the 1990s, but tapered off for many topics from 2000 to
2007. Borrowing from statistics is small across all elds, and management research also plays a
limited role for most topics except for management accounting where it is declining.
23
Table 2, Panel B, shows that the number of nancial accounting papers has increased signi-
cantly from the 1960s to the 2000s. Panels C to G show that managerial accounting, auditing, and
tax have all decreased from the 1990s to the 2000s; governance has increased signicantly in the
23
Our nding on statistics is indicative of accounting research using primarily tried and true statistical methods. In many
cases papers that show improved methodologies are published in nance journals e.g., Petersen 2009, published in the
Review of Financial Studies.
FIGURE 2
Number of Papers byYear
160
180
140
100
120
60
80
40
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
1963 JAR
Launched
1968 Ball
& Brown
19 0
1973 FASB
replaces APB
1978 Watts &
1979 JAE
Launched
1995 Feltham
& Ohlson
1998 WRDS
Launched
1985
Healy
1987
1964 Compustat
Launched
1970 EMH
Articulated by
Eugene Fama
1978 Watts &
Zimmerman
1984 CAR
Launched
1996 Sloan;
RAST
Launched
2002 SOX
Passed
1976 AOS
Launched
1987
Hopwood 1960 CRSP
Launched
This gure shows the aggregate number of papers with at least one U. S. author published in six top accounting
journals (AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, RAST, and TAR) from 1960 to 2007. CRSP refers to the Chicago Center for
Research into Stock Price, EMH refers to the Efcient Market Hypothesis, FASB refers to the Financial Ac-
counting Standards Board, APB refers to the Accounting Principles Board, WRDS refers to Wharton, Research
Data Services, and SOX refers to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
TABLE 2
Proportion of Citations Made by Papers Published in Top Accounting Journals by Research Topic
a
Panel A: Citations by Topic
Topic
Number of
Papers Accounting Finance Economics Psychology Statistics Management
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
Financial Accounting 2577 43.1% 12.2% 6.5% 1.2% 0.8% 1.3% 1.2% 33.8%
Managerial Accounting 741 34.5% 4.1% 10.6% 4.3% 1.0% 9.2% 1.9% 34.4%
Auditing 684 44.0% 1.8% 3.7% 5.1% 1.0% 1.8% 1.1% 41.5%
Tax 237 36.3% 9.1% 8.6% 1.5% 0.6% 0.9% 1.3% 41.7%
Control/Governance 34 27.6% 18.2% 13.8% 1.4% 0.1% 3.0% 1.3% 34.6%
Other Topics 623 32.9% 5.6% 5.6% 3.5% 0.9% 5.6% 4.0% 42.0%
Panel B: Financial Accounting by Decade
Decade
Number of
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 334 34.7% 3.0% 2.3% 0.2% 0.7% 1.8% 3.9% 53.3%
1970s 408 33.8% 10.2% 4.6% 1.8% 1.3% 3.1% 1.4% 43.8%
1980s 497 41.1% 13.8% 7.5% 2.3% 0.7% 1.2% 0.5% 32.9%
1990s 610 46.9% 13.0% 8.5% 1.0% 1.4% 0.9% 0.8% 27.5%
2000s 728 50.3% 15.6% 7.0% 0.6% 0.1% 0.6% 0.6% 25.1%
Panel C: Managerial Accounting by Decade
Decade
Number of
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 113 38.1% 4.7% 3.6% 0.3% 1.9% 6.1% 5.7% 39.7%
1970s 139 32.5% 4.9% 5.3% 6.0% 1.6% 10.7% 1.0% 38.0%
1980s 164 33.4% 4.0% 8.8% 7.4% 0.4% 13.1% 1.0% 31.9%
1990s 182 31.6% 3.3% 17.5% 2.7% 1.0% 7.1% 1.6% 35.1%
2000s 143 38.7% 3.8% 14.6% 4.5% 0.1% 8.6% 1.2% 28.4%
C
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n
Panel D: Auditing by Decade
Decade
Number of
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 33 25.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.9% 1.7% 3.8% 3.7% 65.0%
1970s 91 40.5% 0.7% 1.7% 3.7% 1.1% 3.1% 1.3% 47.8%
1980s 186 38.0% 1.6% 3.5% 7.3% 1.1% 2.1% 0.4% 46.0%
1990s 223 45.9% 1.9% 5.1% 5.0% 1.2% 1.3% 1.5% 38.0%
2000s 151 54.7% 3.2% 4.1% 4.3% 0.2% 1.0% 0.5% 32.0%
Panel E: Tax by Decade
Decade
Number of
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 26 23.7% 2.5% 0.9% 0.0% 0.0% 1.7% 5.3% 66.0%
1970s 14 35.8% 3.9% 4.4% 1.1% 1.1% 2.6% 0.8% 50.3%
1980s 42 31.4% 6.3% 10.7% 1.4% 0.7% 0.9% 0.7% 47.8%
1990s 85 38.7% 9.6% 10.9% 1.5% 1.1% 0.3% 0.7% 37.2%
2000s 70 41.2% 13.7% 8.1% 2.1% 0.1% 0.9% 1.1% 32.7%
Panel F: Control/Governance by Decade
Decade
Number of
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 0 NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
1970s 1 8.0% 4.0% 0.0% 8.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 80.0%
1980s 2 6.7% 7.9% 39.3% 0.0% 0.0% 1.1% 0.0% 44.9%
1990s 6 26.0% 18.0% 9.0% 0.0% 0.0% 4.2% 0.0% 42.8%
2000s 25 30.5% 19.6% 13.4% 1.5% 0.1% 3.0% 1.8% 30.0%
6
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A
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s
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a
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n
Panel G: Other Topics by Decade
Decade
Number of
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 140 24.5% 0.5% 0.9% 0.8% 1.2% 3.9% 10.7% 57.5%
1970s 124 28.7% 4.2% 4.7% 5.4% 0.9% 9.0% 3.5% 43.6%
1980s 137 33.0% 6.0% 9.3% 7.0% 0.4% 8.5% 1.1% 34.7%
1990s 147 39.4% 6.8% 5.6% 1.8% 1.4% 3.3% 2.4% 39.3%
2000s 75 42.3% 13.7% 9.1% 2.2% 0.1% 2.3% 0.9% 29.3%
a
This table shows the proportionate number of citations made by top accounting journals Accounting, Organizations and Society, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of
Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review from 1960 to 2007 for papers with at least one U.S.
author, broken out by research topic Panel A then by decade for each topic Panels B to G. Proportions are calculated based on the total citations. Other Academic Journals
represents an aggregate of remaining academic citations from law, sociology, education, health, and miscellaneous disciplines, and Other Citations represents an aggregate of all
other citations accounting regulations, books, working papers, etc..
C
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6
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2000s but still remains a relatively small topic.
24
Figure 3 plots the relative proportion of papers
by topic graphically, and emphasizes the increase in nancial accounting papers, from about 42
percent in 1960 to about 65 percent in 2007. However, the most dramatic increase in nancial
accounting occurred around 1995, coinciding with the publication of Feltham and Ohlson 1995,
Sloan 1996, and the founding of RAST in 1996. The portion of other topics has generally
decreased in a similar manner: relative stability until around 1995, tapering off slightly thereafter.
Table 3 breaks out papers by research methodology instead of topic. Because most nancial
accounting research is archival, our results show a similar dominance by archival research the
number of archival papers is over twice the next highest methodology, theoretical modeling.
Archival research draws heavily from nance at almost 15 percent, and Panel B shows that the
trend is increasing over time. Theoretical research draws more from economics than other meth-
24
Comparing absolute numbers can be misleading because we have only eight years of data from 2000 to 2007, versus ten
years for the 1990s.
FIGURE 3
Proportion of Papers by Topic
80%
60%
70%
30%
40%
50%
P
r
o
p
o
r
t
i
o
n
FA
MA
Audit
Tax
Other
10%
20%
30% P
0%
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
1963 JAR
Launched
1968 Ball
& Brown
19 0
1973 FASB
replaces APB
1978 Watts &
1979 JAE
Launched
1995 Feltham
& Ohlson
1998 WRDS
Launched
1985
Healy
1987
1964 Compustat
Launched
1970 EMH
Articulated by
Eugene Fama
1978 Watts &
Zimmerman
1984 CAR
Launched
1996 Sloan;
RAST
Launched
2002 SOX
Passed
1976 AOS
Launched
1987
Hopwood 1960 CRSP
Launched
This gure shows the proportionate number of papers published by topic in the top six accounting journals
(AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, RAST, and TAR) from 1960 to 2007 for papers with at least one U.S. author. If a paper
covered more than one topic, then we selected the primary topic for purposes of categorization. Because gov-
ernance topics make up a relatively lowproportion of topics, for brevity governance is excluded fromthis gure.
CRSP refers to the Chicago Center for Research into Stock Price, EMH refers to the Efcient Market Hypoth-
esis, FASB refers to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, APB refers to the Accounting Principles Board,
WRDS refers to Wharton Research Data Services, and SOX refers to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
TABLE 3
Proportion of Citations Made by Papers Published in Top Accounting Journals by Research Methodology
a
Panel A: Citations by Methodology
Topic
Number
of Papers Accounting Finance Economics Psychology Statistics Management
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
Archival 2134 45.3% 14.4% 6.2% 0.4% 0.7% 1.2% 0.9% 30.9%
Experimental 745 36.7% 3.1% 5.0% 9.5% 1.0% 3.0% 1.3% 40.5%
Field Study 66 27.6% 3.2% 5.0% 7.3% 0.1% 17.6% 1.8% 37.4%
Review 124 41.8% 7.0% 5.9% 5.0% 0.9% 4.0% 1.1% 34.4%
Survey 156 30.3% 3.1% 2.8% 8.0% 0.7% 13.0% 3.4% 38.8%
Theoretical 844 40.0% 5.9% 14.6% 0.8% 1.2% 3.3% 1.1% 33.0%
Normative 827 32.8% 2.6% 2.9% 1.7% 0.7% 4.9% 4.3% 50.1%
Panel B: Archival by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 59 26.2% 8.3% 5.0% 0.0% 0.6% 2.7% 4.0% 53.2%
1970s 219 33.9% 12.5% 5.2% 0.7% 1.7% 2.1% 1.5% 42.3%
1980s 433 43.1% 14.5% 5.9% 0.9% 0.6% 1.3% 0.5% 33.2%
1990s 651 47.6% 13.4% 6.5% 0.2% 1.2% 1.1% 0.8% 29.2%
2000s 772 49.3% 16.4% 6.4% 0.2% 0.2% 0.8% 0.7% 26.1%
Panel C: Experimental by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 36 29.6% 3.2% 1.7% 4.2% 2.5% 2.8% 3.1% 53.0%
1970s 140 29.3% 4.4% 2.0% 8.9% 1.2% 4.9% 2.1% 47.3%
1980s 214 35.0% 2.4% 3.9% 10.4% 0.6% 3.4% 0.7% 43.6%
1990s 200 38.0% 2.6% 7.9% 9.1% 1.7% 1.8% 1.4% 37.5%
2000s 155 45.7% 3.5% 6.2% 10.3% 0.1% 2.4% 0.9% 30.9%
C
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a
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a
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A
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6
5
1
A
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A
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s
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a
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Panel D: Field Study by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 0 NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
1970s 6 23.3% 11.3% 9.4% 16.4% 0.0% 27.9% 0.6% 11.0%
1980s 23 29.5% 2.3% 5.4% 10.0% 0.1% 20.9% 2.1% 29.9%
1990s 19 27.5% 1.4% 1.7% 4.3% 0.1% 11.9% 2.4% 50.7%
2000s 18 26.9% 3.5% 6.4% 3.9% 0.2% 16.2% 1.0% 42.0%
Panel E: Review by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 5 27.1% 1.5% 2.4% 1.1% 0.0% 1.6% 3.0% 63.4%
1970s 22 30.6% 5.3% 3.4% 7.9% 1.6% 5.2% 0.3% 45.6%
1980s 46 42.7% 4.9% 6.8% 7.2% 0.2% 4.9% 1.0% 32.4%
1990s 23 38.2% 9.2% 4.9% 2.8% 3.0% 3.4% 2.7% 35.9%
2000s 28 54.6% 10.8% 8.1% 1.6% 0.0% 2.3% 0.1% 22.5%
Panel F: Survey by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 10 6.1% 0.0% 3.3% 0.0% 1.4% 9.8% 21.2% 58.2%
1970s 35 25.6% 4.8% 2.7% 7.1% 0.7% 13.5% 2.3% 43.3%
1980s 48 29.2% 3.1% 3.3% 14.2% 0.3% 15.5% 1.5% 32.9%
1990s 30 34.6% 1.4% 1.7% 4.8% 1.5% 8.6% 3.8% 43.6%
2000s 33 40.7% 3.5% 2.8% 5.5% 0.2% 13.5% 1.3% 32.4%
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Panel G: Theoretical by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 48 34.9% 7.2% 6.0% 0.0% 0.7% 6.5% 4.6% 40.1%
1970s 206 39.2% 6.1% 6.3% 1.3% 1.6% 5.3% 1.3% 38.9%
1980s 172 33.9% 6.6% 16.4% 1.3% 1.5% 2.8% 0.3% 37.2%
1990s 255 40.7% 4.5% 19.6% 0.6% 1.4% 2.7% 1.1% 29.3%
2000s 163 48.0% 6.8% 18.0% 0.3% 0.0% 1.3% 0.7% 25.0%
Panel H: Normative by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 488 33.3% 1.5% 1.3% 0.2% 1.1% 2.8% 5.9% 54.0%
1970s 149 31.9% 3.6% 3.1% 2.7% 0.3% 7.9% 2.0% 48.5%
1980s 92 30.2% 6.0% 9.3% 7.2% 0.3% 11.9% 1.3% 33.8%
1990s 75 32.0% 3.2% 4.3% 3.0% 0.1% 4.5% 2.6% 50.4%
2000s 23 40.3% 5.6% 4.6% 0.6% 0.1% 5.2% 0.8% 42.8%
a
Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review from 1960 to 2007 for papers with at least one U.S.
author, broken out by research methodology Panel A then by decade for each method Panels B to H. Proportions are calculated based on the total citations. Other Academic
Journals represents an aggregate of remaining academic citations from law, sociology, education, health, and miscellaneous disciplines, and Other Citations represents an
aggregate of all other citations accounting regulations, books, working papers, etc..
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odologies also at almost 15 percent and experimental research draws signicantly from psychol-
ogy almost 10 percent. Field studies draw the least from prior accounting and are much more
dependent on management. We nd a similar result for survey papers.
Figure 4 illustrates the time trend in the relative proportion of methodologies, and indicates
the precipitous drop in normative research, from a high in 1963 to almost negligible by the
mid-1980s, consistent with observations from Bricker and Previts 1990, Reiter and Williams
2002, Williams 2003, and Granof and Zeff 2008. The period from 1968 to 1979 is charac-
terized by roughly equal representation among all methodologies except normative, which
declined.
25
However, roughly corresponding with the publication of Watts and Zimmerman 1978
and the inauguration of the JAE in 1979, we see a growing dominance of archival research over
25
We are ignoring reviews here, which may be viewed as a pseudo-methodology because they are concerned with
summarizing and synthesizing prior research rather than discovering new knowledge.
FIGURE 4
Proportion of Papers by Methodology
100%
70%
80%
90%
A hi l
40%
50%
60%
70%
P
r
o
p
o
r
t
i
o
n
Archival
Experimental
Theoretical
Normative
10%
20%
30%
40%
P
0%
10%
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
1963 JAR
Launched
1968 Ball
& Brown
19 0
1973 FASB
replaces APB
1978 Watts &
1979 JAE
Launched
1995 Feltham
& Ohlson
1998 WRDS
Launched
1985
Healy
1987
1964 Compustat
Launched
1970 EMH
Articulated by
Eugene Fama
1978 Watts &
Zimmerman
1984 CAR
Launched
1996 Sloan;
RAST
Launched
2002 SOX
Passed
1976 AOS
Launched
1987
Hopwood 1960 CRSP
Launched
This gure shows the proportionate number of papers published by methodology in the top six accounting
journals (AOS, CAR, JAE, JAR, RAST, and TAR) from 1960 to 2007 for papers with at least one U.S. author. If a
paper used more than one methodology, then we categorized the paper by its primary methodology. Because
eld studies, reviews, and surveys make up a relatively low proportion of methodologies, for brevity they are
excluded from this gure. CRSP refers to the Chicago Center for Research into Stock Price, EMH refers to the
Efcient Market Hypothesis, FASB refers to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, APB refers to the
Accounting Principles Board, WRDS refers to Wharton Research Data Services, and SOX refers to the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
other methodologies. This signicant increase is preceded by the availability of signicant data
sets such as CRSP and Compustat, which allowed archival researchers to investigate questions that
were previously only answerable using experimental or eld study approaches. Over 1970 to 2007
we also see a slight decrease in theoretical research, and a more pronounced decrease for experi-
mental research.
26
Tables 46 break out citations, topics, and methodologies by journal, and help to characterize
the avor of each journal. Panel A in Table 4 gives an overview of citation sources by journal.
Consistent with its name, JAE papers draw from economics 11 percent, but even more heavily
from nance 18 percent. AOS draws the least from prior accounting work 30 percent versus 39
percent for TAR, the next lowest and draws the most from psychology and management. Panels B
to F detail the trend in citations for each journal by decade. Each journal shows a strong trend
toward citing prior accounting work except JAR which remains stable in accounting citations
from the 1990s to 2000s, at 45 percent, coupled with a large increase in citations from nance.
Table 5 examines paper topics by decade and journal. The increasing dominance of nancial
accounting is evident in Panel A, along with the relative decline of managerial accounting, audit,
and tax. Panel B breaks out topics by journal and indicates some stark differences. RAST publishes
predominantly nancial accounting papers with some managerial, but relatively few audit, tax,
and governance papers. In contrast, AOS publishes proportionately more managerial accounting
papers than other journals 34 percent to 16 percent, the next highest from TAR, and CAR
publishes proportionately the most audit research. Tax research makes up a relatively small portion
of total research, with JAE publishing proportionately more tax research than the other journals.
The drop in published research in audit and tax is consistent with the unmet demand for audit and
tax researchers noted by Plumlee et al. 2005.
Breaking out trends by individual journal, CAR is the only journal to move contrary to the
trend toward increasing nancial accounting research 64 percent of papers in the 1990s to 50
percent in the 2000s; all other journals have increased the proportion of nancial accounting
papers published. CAR also increased its proportion of managerial, audit, and tax papers, while
these topics have declined or remained the same for JAR, RAST, and TAR. AOS shows a small
increase in nancial papers published 15 percent to 17 percent but also shows a large jump in
managerial research, from 27 percent to 41 percent. The aggregate number of governance papers
published is small 34 papers, from Table 2, and are published mostly by AOS and JAE.
Table 6 examines methodologies by decade and journal. Consistent with the increase in
nancial accounting research noted in the prior tables, there is a strong trend toward proportion-
ately more archival research, shown in Panel A. Normative research drops from being the domi-
nant methodology in the 1960s to being almost nonexistent. Experimental work declined from a
zenith in the 1980s, and theoretical work seems to have wide swings over time. Panel B reveals
considerable variation by journal: JAE and RAST publish primarily archival papers; JAR, AOS, and
CAR publish relatively more experimental papers; RAST and CAR publish relatively more theo-
retical papers.
Panels C to G present the time trend for each journal. We nd an increase in the relative
proportion of archival research from the 1990s to the 2000s for almost all journals the only
exception being JAE, which devoted its entire September 2001 issue to reviews. We also nd a
precipitous decline in experimental research in JAR, going from 25 percent in the 1970s down to
8 percent in the 2000s, but an increase in experimental research published in both CAR and AOS.
26
This is consistent with two of the three new journals JAE and RAST launched from 1979 to 1996 being strongly
oriented toward archival research. Only CAR has published a signicant number of experimental papers. JAE and RAST
have published almost no experimental papers.
TABLE 4
Proportion of Citations Made by Papers Published in Top Accounting Journals, by Journal
a
Panel A: Summary of Top Six Accounting Journals
Journal
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
AOS 520 30.2% 4.3% 4.2% 9.4% 0.2% 13.5% 1.9% 36.2%
CAR 527 48.0% 8.6% 8.8% 2.3% 2.9% 1.6% 1.3% 26.5%
JAE 536 43.8% 18.1% 10.8% 0.1% 0.2% 0.8% 0.8% 25.4%
JAR 1469 39.5% 9.0% 7.2% 2.2% 0.8% 1.7% 1.0% 38.7%
RAST 208 49.8% 11.5% 9.6% 0.2% 0.2% 0.8% 1.8% 26.0%
TAR 1636 39.0% 6.0% 4.8% 1.8% 0.8% 2.7% 2.5% 42.5%
Panel B: Accounting, Organizations and Society, by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1970s 59 27.9% 7.5% 5.4% 12.8% 0.1% 28.6% 2.0% 15.5%
1980s 193 30.4% 4.7% 4.8% 13.7% 0.3% 15.9% 1.7% 28.4%
1990s 169 28.6% 2.7% 2.5% 5.0% 0.0% 6.7% 2.6% 51.8%
2000s 99 34.1% 4.2% 5.5% 6.2% 0.1% 11.5% 1.2% 37.2%
Panel C: Contemporary Accounting Research, by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1980s 101 41.2% 7.3% 9.7% 2.6% 1.2% 3.1% 1.8% 33.2%
1990s 237 47.8% 9.6% 10.0% 2.1% 5.8% 1.4% 1.9% 21.4%
2000s 189 52.0% 8.1% 6.6% 2.4% 0.1% 1.1% 0.4% 29.4%
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Panel D: Journal of Accounting and Economics, by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1970s 8 17.8% 20.6% 19.7% 0.0% 0.3% 0.0% 0.0% 41.6%
1980s 102 37.1% 17.6% 11.3% 0.0% 0.2% 1.0% 0.1% 32.6%
1990s 228 45.7% 16.4% 10.3% 0.1% 0.2% 0.9% 0.4% 26.0%
2000s 198 46.2% 20.3% 10.7% 0.2% 0.2% 0.5% 1.7% 20.2%
Panel E: Journal of Accounting Research, by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 147 29.1% 4.5% 4.1% 1.2% 1.4% 2.7% 3.9% 53.0%
1970s 331 33.2% 7.4% 4.7% 2.7% 1.5% 2.5% 1.5% 46.5%
1980s 433 40.7% 9.1% 7.8% 2.6% 0.8% 1.1% 0.2% 37.6%
1990s 294 45.4% 7.2% 9.3% 2.4% 0.2% 1.9% 0.6% 33.0%
2000s 264 44.8% 15.5% 8.6% 1.0% 0.1% 0.6% 0.3% 29.1%
Panel F: Review of Accounting Studies, by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1990s 59 43.6% 6.3% 12.9% 0.1% 0.3% 1.2% 4.6% 31.0%
2000s 149 52.2% 13.6% 8.3% 0.3% 0.1% 0.7% 0.7% 24.0%
Panel G: The Accounting Review, by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1960s 499 33.0% 2.0% 1.4% 0.1% 1.0% 3.2% 6.3% 52.9%
1970s 379 35.0% 6.4% 3.7% 2.5% 1.3% 4.4% 1.7% 45.0%
1980s 199 37.1% 7.7% 6.0% 3.5% 0.8% 1.7% 0.4% 42.8%
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Panel G: The Accounting Review, by Decade
Decade
Number
Other
Academic
Journals
Other
Citations
1990s 266 42.6% 7.3% 10.0% 2.0% 0.5% 1.2% 0.4% 35.9%
2000s 293 52.1% 9.6% 6.6% 2.4% 0.2% 1.6% 0.5% 27.0%
a
Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review for papers with at least one U.S. author, broken out by
journal. Panel A presents aggregate results from 1960 to 2007. Panels B to G show proportions for each journal separately, by decade. Proportions are calculated based on the total
citations. Other Academic Journals represents an aggregate of remaining academic citations from law, sociology, education, health, and miscellaneous disciplines, and Other
Citations represents an aggregate of all other citations accounting regulations, books, working papers, etc..
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TABLE 5
Research Topic by Decade and Journal
a
Panel A: Summary of Top Six Accounting Journals, by Decade
Decade Number of Papers Financial Managerial Audit Tax Governance Other
1960s 792 48.6% 16.7% 4.8% 3.9% 0.0% 26.0%
1970s 810 52.8% 17.4% 11.9% 2.1% 0.1% 15.7%
1980s 1038 48.3% 15.9% 17.9% 4.0% 0.2% 13.7%
1990s 1278 48.4% 14.6% 17.9% 6.7% 0.5% 11.7%
2000s 1196 61.2% 12.0% 12.6% 5.9% 2.1% 6.3%
Panel B: Summary of Top Six Accounting Journals, by Journal
Journal Number of Papers Financial Managerial Audit Tax Governance Other
AOS 524 16.6% 33.8% 15.8% 1.7% 1.1% 30.9%
CAR 532 58.1% 10.3% 22.2% 5.6% 0.0% 3.8%
JAE 557 52.8% 9.5% 4.3% 6.5% 2.7% 24.2%
JAR 1529 59.0% 12.0% 15.4% 4.8% 0.5% 8.4%
RAST 210 83.8% 10.5% 3.8% 1.0% 0.5% 0.5%
TAR 1762 50.9% 15.8% 13.1% 5.4% 0.3% 14.4%
Panel C: Accounting, Organizations and Society, by Decade
1970s 60 20.0% 26.7% 11.7% 0.0% 0.0% 41.7%
1980s 196 16.3% 38.3% 15.3% 1.5% 0.0% 28.6%
1990s 169 15.4% 26.6% 19.5% 0.6% 0.6% 37.3%
2000s 99 17.2% 41.4% 13.1% 5.1% 5.1% 18.2%
Panel D: Contemporary Accounting Research, by Decade
1980s 101 59.4% 14.9% 20.8% 1.0% 0.0% 4.0%
1990s 242 63.6% 7.0% 19.8% 5.0% 0.0% 4.5%
2000s 189 50.3% 12.2% 25.9% 9.0% 0.0% 2.6%
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Panel E: Journal of Accounting and Economics, by Decade
1970s 8 50.0% 12.5% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 37.5%
1980s 108 58.3% 1.9% 5.6% 4.6% 0.9% 28.7%
1990s 242 45.0% 14.9% 4.5% 6.2% 2.5% 26.9%
2000s 199 59.3% 7.0% 3.5% 8.0% 4.0% 18.1%
Panel F: Journal of Accounting Research, by Decade
1960s 178 52.8% 19.7% 3.9% 6.2% 0.0% 17.4%
1970s 353 58.4% 13.9% 14.7% 0.6% 0.3% 12.2%
1980s 434 56.9% 11.3% 18.4% 3.7% 0.0% 9.7%
1990s 300 53.3% 10.0% 23.7% 11.3% 0.0% 1.7%
2000s 264 73.9% 7.6% 9.8% 3.8% 2.3% 2.7%
Panel G: Review of Accounting Studies, by Decade
1990s 59 74.6% 18.6% 5.1% 0.0% 0.0% 1.7%
2000s 151 87.4% 7.3% 3.3% 1.3% 0.7% 0.0%
Panel H: The Accounting Review, by Decade
1960s 614 47.4% 15.8% 5.0% 3.3% 0.0% 28.5%
1970s 389 53.0% 19.3% 9.5% 3.9% 0.0% 14.4%
1980s 199 49.7% 12.1% 24.6% 8.5% 0.5% 4.5%
1990s 266 47.4% 18.0% 23.7% 9.0% 0.0% 1.9%
2000s 294 59.5% 11.6% 17.3% 6.8% 1.7% 3.1%
a
This table shows the proportion of papers published by topic in top accounting journals Accounting, Organizations and Society, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of
Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review for papers with at least one U.S. author, from 1960 to
2007. Panel A presents aggregate results by decade. Panel B presents aggregate results by journal. Panels C to H show results for each journal separately, by decade.
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TABLE 6
Research Method by Decade and Journal
a
Panel A: Summary of Top Six Accounting Journals, by Decade
Decade
Number of
Papers Archival Experimental Field Study Review Survey Theoretical Normative
1960s 792 9.6% 4.9% 0.0% 0.8% 1.6% 6.4% 76.6%
1970s 810 28.3% 17.9% 0.9% 2.8% 4.3% 25.8% 20.0%
1980s 1038 42.1% 20.6% 2.2% 4.6% 4.6% 16.6% 9.2%
1990s 1278 52.1% 15.8% 1.5% 1.9% 2.3% 20.5% 5.9%
2000s 1196 64.7% 13.0% 1.5% 2.3% 2.8% 13.7% 2.0%
Panel B: Summary of Top Six Accounting Journals, by Journal
Journal
Number of
AOS 524 10.7% 19.8% 12.0% 6.5% 14.3% 4.6% 32.1%
CAR 532 48.9% 18.8% 0.8% 2.1% 2.4% 25.2% 1.9%
JAE 557 81.9% 0.7% 0.0% 5.9% 0.0% 11.1% 0.4%
JAR 1529 47.8% 20.1% 0.0% 1.8% 0.3% 20.3% 9.5%
RAST 210 63.3% 2.4% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 34.3% 0.0%
TAR 1762 31.0% 13.3% 0.0% 1.3% 3.7% 14.5% 36.2%
Panel C: Accounting, Organizations and Society, by Decade
Decade
Number of
1970s 60 8.3% 11.7% 11.7% 5.0% 16.7% 5.0% 41.7%
1980s 196 9.2% 23.5% 11.7% 7.7% 13.3% 1.5% 33.2%
1990s 169 10.7% 16.6% 11.2% 4.7% 9.5% 10.1% 37.3%
2000s 99 15.2% 23.2% 14.1% 8.1% 23.2% 1.0% 15.2%
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Panel D: Contemporary Accounting Research, by Decade
Decade
Number of
1980s 101 36.6% 8.9% 0.0% 3.0% 5.9% 39.6% 5.9%
1990s 242 50.4% 18.6% 0.0% 2.5% 1.7% 26.0% 0.8%
2000s 189 53.4% 24.3% 2.1% 1.1% 1.6% 16.4% 1.1%
Panel E: Journal of Accounting and Economics, by Decade
Decade
Number of
1970s 8 62.5% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 37.5% 0.0%
1980s 108 79.6% 0.0% 0.0% 7.4% 0.0% 11.1% 1.9%
1990s 242 83.5% 0.8% 0.0% 2.9% 0.0% 12.8% 0.0%
2000s 199 81.9% 1.0% 0.0% 9.0% 0.0% 8.0% 0.0%
Panel F: Journal of Accounting Research, by Decade
Decade
Number of
1960s 178 24.7% 17.4% 0.0% 2.2% 0.0% 13.5% 42.1%
1970s 353 36.0% 25.2% 0.0% 2.3% 0.0% 21.5% 15.0%
1980s 434 45.4% 24.9% 0.0% 3.5% 0.0% 22.4% 3.9%
1990s 300 55.0% 19.7% 0.0% 0.3% 1.3% 23.7% 0.0%
2000s 264 75.0% 8.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.4% 16.3% 0.4%
Panel G: Review of Accounting Studies, by Decade
Decade
Number of
1990s 59 42.4% 3.4% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 54.2% 0.0%
2000s 151 71.5% 2.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 26.5% 0.0%
6
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Panel H: The Accounting Review, by Decade
Decade
Number of
1960s 614 5.2% 1.3% 0.0% 0.3% 2.1% 4.4% 86.6%
1970s 389 23.7% 12.6% 0.0% 3.1% 6.4% 32.6% 21.6%
1980s 199 49.7% 25.6% 0.0% 3.5% 8.0% 10.1% 3.0%
1990s 266 50.4% 24.8% 0.0% 0.8% 2.3% 18.0% 3.8%
2000s 294 64.3% 20.4% 0.0% 0.0% 2.0% 11.2% 2.0%
a
This table shows the proportion of papers published by research method in top accounting journals Accounting, Organizations and Society, Contemporary Accounting Research,
Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review for papers with at least one U.S. author, from
1960 to 2007. Panel A presents aggregate results by decade. Panel B presents aggregate results by journal. Panels C to H show proportions for each journal separately, by decade.
C
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Theoretical research is also declining in all journals, most signicantly in CAR and RAST.
Overall, these results present a mixed picture on the health of accounting as an academic
discipline. Accounting research appears to have constructed a strong foundation from which to
build: about half the citations in recently published accounting papers refer to prior accounting
work. However, topics and methodologies appear to be narrowing to nancial and archival; other
topics and methodologies are, on average, in decline.
Characterizing Accounting Research
Building on our overview of citations, topics, and methodologies used by papers published in
top accounting journals, we respond to the question: What is accounting research? Accounting
research necessarily covers a wide swath of related areas, and we use a diagram of nancial
reporting, modied from Nikolai et al. 2007 to help us classify these areas.
27
This is necessarily
a simplication, but we believe it captures the essential focus of the various streams of accounting
research. As shown in Figure 5, nancial accounting research focuses on the effect of accounting
information on the investment decisions of external users in capital markets. Audit research fo-
cuses on the audit function, which sits between the accounting information produced by the rm
and capital markets. Managerial accounting focuses on the link between accounting information
and internal users, while tax focuses on the link between accounting information and taxation
authorities, as well as the capital markets. Governance research focuses on corporate economic
activities, which in turn drives accounting information.
One area of contention centers on the response of capital markets to accounting information.
In a recent example, Hand 2002 argues that Skinner and Sloans 2002 earnings torpedo paper
is not accounting research because it does not focus on any of the key characteristics of
accounting.
28
More generally, the effect of economic events on the generation of accounting
information appears to be commonly accepted as accounting research, but the effect of accounting
information on economic events appears to be less so. We show this link with a question mark in
Figure 5.
The results indicate that accounting research refers to a broad spectrum of research that is
informed primarily by nance and economics. Any proposed characterization based on prior
accounting publications must be broad enough to include nancial and managerial accounting
obviously, auditing, tax, and possibly governance. Kinney 2001, 278 denes the domain of
accounting scholarship as the knowledge of the individual and aggregate effects of alternative
standardized business measurement and reporting structures. His approach stems from an insti-
tutional viewpoint and is perhaps more normative in nature; our focus is on what accounting
authors and editors have concluded on which papers are within the bounds of accounting research.
In addition, Kinney is describing an area where accounting researchers have a relative advantage,
not necessarily providing an all-inclusive characterization of accounting research.
In spite of the above differences, our proposed characterization builds on Kinneys description
of the domain of accounting:
Accounting research is research into the effect of economic events on the process of summarizing,
analyzing, verifying, and reporting standardized nancial information, and on the effects of re-
ported information on economic events.
27
We place our proposed characterization after our discussion of trends in accounting research to emphasize that it is
based on the data we observe. It is not a hypothesis that we attempt to support with data; it is a description that we
derive from the data.
28
He enumerates a nonexclusive list of these key characteristics: accruals, recognition bias, measurement, matching, and
accounting rules versus discretion.
The term nancial information is purposefully very broad, and is meant to include tax
information, analyst forecasts, and even relatively simple information such as cash level and
inventory.
29
For most accounting research, nancial information relates to businesses, but account-
ing research can also extend to other entities such as governments and nonprot organizations.
Standardized information is information that is generated and presented in compliance with a
measurement structure: GAAP for nancial accounting, and internal reporting guidelines for man-
agement accounting information to be used inside the rm. Effect is also a very broad term, and
encompasses used, misused, misunderstood, or even ignoredfor example, Sloan 1996
and Picconi 2006. Economic events is equally broad; most accounting research will fall within
a pecuniary denition of the change in a rms reported income or stock price, but the term can
also extend to all human events dealing with the allocation of scarce resources e.g., hiring or
ring of a CEO.
29
However, simple information can have signicant and complex implications, as Bernard and Thomas 1989 show with
the relationship between earnings and post-earnings announcement drift, and as Oler 2008 shows with the relationship
between acquirer cash level and post-acquisition returns.
FIGURE 5
Mapping Accounting Research into Financial Reporting
This gure maps different topics of accounting research into nancial reporting, based on a diagramof nancial
reporting provided in Nikolai et al. (2007). Ovals denote various areas of accounting research focus. Rectangles
denote the various institutional and economic factors. The thick solid line represents information ow, and the
dashed line represents the effect of external investors and internal managers decisions on the activities of the
rm.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
This paper examines trends in accounting research in citations as a proxy for the literatures
from which seminal accounting research ideas are drawn, topics, and methodologies. Our intent
is to assess the current condition of academic accounting research as a discipline by examining
antecedent ideas and to propose a characterization of accounting research that is consistent with
papers published in the top six accounting journals.
Our results on the proportion of citations being drawn from accounting research, and on the
number of papers being published by top accounting journals, suggest that there are signicant
problems ahead. The increase in output seems more attributable to faculty working increased
hours than to an overall increase in faculty. Trends from Ph.D. programs suggest that there will
continue to be unmet demand, especially in auditing and taxation, and we nd that the proportion
of research from these elds published in our six journals is already dropping. The Accounting
Doctoral Scholars program announced by the AICPA in 2008 should help to attract more auditing
and tax researchers to the profession, but no similar program exists to attract managerial or
theoretical researchers.
The relative proportion of citations drawn from prior accounting papers appears to have
plateaued at just under 50 percent, and borrowing from economics and nance has increased,
which suggests that accounting is not becoming more insular. However, concerns about decreasing
diversity in accounting research are supported: We show that nancial accounting is becoming
increasingly dominant except for CAR and AOS and other topics are declining. Archival meth-
odologies are also becoming more dominant.
With respect to the trend toward more nancial accounting/archival research, this trend is
consistent with a signicant number of events. These include the creation of massive databases of
stock returns and nancial statement information, advances in computing technology to use these
databases, the founding of JAR in 1963, and the publication of seminal papers such as Ball and
Brown in 1968. All accounting Ph.D. programs of which we are aware can accommodate nancial
accounting/archival research interests, but fewer can accommodate other topics or methodologies
especially tax and theoretical research.
Our results augment the observation of Levitt and Nicolaisen 2008, VI:19 that the bond
between the profession and academia is underdeveloped by indicating that the bond is not un-
derdeveloped so much as steadily atrophied. Most papers in the 60s were normative, often cited
work from areas other than nance and economics, and often dealt directly with issues facing a
professional accountant or auditor.
30
Similarly, Carcello 2007 observes that students entering an
accounting Ph.D. program today are more likely to come from a quantitative background e.g.,
nance or economics, while the typical Ph.D. student 2030 years ago was more likely to come
from a professional background. Granof and Zeff 2008 note that accounting researchers in the
60s began borrowing methodologies from other disciplines as an effort to improve academic
respectability relative to their peers in other elds. Our results suggest that 1 this effort has had
a profound effect on accounting research in general, but 2 one of the costs of this change is a
widening gulf between accounting academics and accounting professionals. Levitt and Nicolaisen
2008 make several proposals to help close this gap, including cross-sabbaticals where account-
ing academics temporarily move to professional positions within an accounting rm or govern-
ment entity such as the FASB, SEC, and PCAOB, and also where accounting professionals
30
A quick perusal of early issues of The Accounting Review will illustrate how much academic accounting research has
shifted over time. The October 1960 issue includes articles titled Decreasing Charge DepreciationA Search for
Logic, Inuence of Salvage Value upon Choice of Tax Depreciation Methods, Measuring Financial Liquidity,
Price Level Accounting, Statistical Sampling in the Audit of the Air Force Motor Vehicle Inventory, and Separation
of Fixed and Variable Costs.
temporarily move to academic positions at universities. They also encourage the provision of data
such as audit information to academics to facilitate additional research.
Researchers can also take steps to close the gap between academia and the profession. We
suggest that accounting research should focus on asking and answering questions that are 1
useful to both academics and nonacademics, and 2 are within the varied expertise of accounting
researchers. The particular methodologies used should be the best ones suited for the question, not
necessarily the ones in vogue at the time. When we limit ourselves to only questions that can be
answered by the dominant methodology, existing homogenized databases, or worse, to only ques-
tions within the dominant topic of the day, we do the professional accounting community and
ourselves a disservice.
Our study is meant to initiate and continue discussion and debate, not conclude it. Our
proposed current characterization of accounting research is a starting point, to be followed by
further reasoning and discussion. As mentioned previously, we also do not intend for our results to
be interpreted as criticism of editors and reviewers. Authors are the rst-movers in the publications
game: Editors cannot accept papers that are never written or never submitted. Accounting re-
searchers desiring tenure at top schools are strongly encouraged to work on projects that appear to
t at top journals Demski 2007; Moizer 2009, and to send those papers to journals that have
published similar papers. This creates a self-fullling prophecy; for example, JAE has published
little experimental research, so would an experimental researcher risk sending her work there for
review?
We make several contributions to the literature, primarily by facilitating informed discussion
on the health of the profession, and on facilitating informed discussion on the question: What is
accounting research? Several researchers have raised concerns about the profession e.g., Swanson
2004; Plumlee et al. 2005; Rayburn 2005; Fogarty and Markarian 2007; Hopwood 2007; Demski
2007; Fellingham 2007; Leslie 2008; Granof and Zeff 2008. As Demski notes, many of the
challenges we face today are not new for example, see Williams 1985; Mautz 1965. But this
does not mean they should be ignored.
We believe that this paper will also be a useful tool for introductory Ph.D. research seminars
that wish to provide a general overview on trends in accounting research. Ph.D. students and new
faculty may be interested in our ndings when considering possible homes for their research.
Administrators of Ph.D. programs may be interested in our results as they make decisions on
where to allocate scarce resources and on their admissions decisions. Professional accountants can
use this paper to help explain the gap between academic and professional accountants. We also
hope this paper will emphasize calls for greater diversity within the umbrella of accounting
research e.g., Rayburn 2006; Granof and Zeff 2008.
APPENDIX
CLASSIFICATION EXPLANATIONS FOR TOPIC AND METHODOLOGY
Topic Denitions
Financial Accounting: Papers dealing with external nancial reporting including analysts
and analyst forecasts.
Managerial Accounting: Papers dealing with internal reporting and evaluation, internal bud-
geting, and transfer pricing.
Auditing: Papers dealing with auditing and auditors including internal controls over report-
ing.
Tax: Papers dealing with federal and state income tax issues, tax planning, tax strategies, and
the impact of taxes on capital markets.
Governance: Papers dealing with overall corporate governance and control e.g., structure of
the board, shareholder rights.
Other Topics: All other topics that do not appear to t into the above categories e.g.,
education, history, the CPA exam, etc..
Methodology Descriptions
Archival: Papers using data from historical market information typically stock prices, but
could include bond or commodity prices. Also known as capital markets research e.g.,
Kothari 2001.
Experimental: Papers using data from human subjects that are assigned to multiple treatment
groups to distinguish from survey research, where data is collected from all subjects with no
pretreatment assignment.
Field Study: Papers using data from direct observation i.e., company visits, interviews,
characterized by a small sample size often one rm but rich, descriptive data.
Review: A pseudo-methodology because a review does not provide new data. Summarizes
and synthesizes prior research.
Survey: Papers using data gathered by soliciting information from human subjects without
assignment to a treatment group.
Theoretical: Papers constructing and/or using analytical i.e., mathematical models, charac-
terized by proofs, lemmas, etc.
Normative: Papers that do not include data or analytical models and that do not review prior
work. This is a catch-all category for work that does not t into the above methodologies.
Normative papers typically argue for a particular accounting treatment or course of action
i.e., what should be.
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