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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 finance 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 find that the situation

today is the result of trends set in motion decades ago with an explicit decision by

influential 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 financial 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 identified threats to accounting as

an academic discipline, and some question its future viability. Others have noted the gap that oftenexists 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, DanaHermanson, two anonymous reviewers, and participants at the 2007 BYU Accounting Research Symposium and the 2009American Accounting Association Annual Meeting for helpful comments on prior versions of this paper. All remainingerrors are our own. We also thank Laura Oler for her programming assistance. We are grateful to Kevin Federico, RobertBrandt, Kara Brandt, Monte Searle, and Brian Watson for their research assistance.

Accounting Horizons American Accounting AssociationVol. 24, No. 4 DOI: 10.2308/acch.2010.24.4.6352010 pp. 635–670

Submitted: March 2010 Accepted: April 2010

Published Online: December 2010Corresponding author: Derek K. Oler

Email: [email protected]

635

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Researchers have raised significant 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 paperswill 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 fields 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 financial accounting research topics in academic journals, and Tuttle and Dillard

2007 find a strong trend in publications in The Accounting Review toward more financial ac-

counting papers and fewer papers on other topics. We investigate whether this trend extends to

other journals. Specifically, 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 finance,

economics, psychology, and management. Building on Zeff 1996, we classify citation sources

into eight categories: accounting, finance, 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 categ ories:

financial accounting, managerial accounting, auditing, tax, governance, and other topics.1

We

classify the research methodologies used into seven categories: archival, experimental, field 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.

3In

cases where a paper addresses multiple topics, or uses multiple methodologies, we select the

primary topic and primary methodology for our classifications. We provide an expanded descrip-

tion of our categories in the Appendix.

Our results indicate that the nature of accounting research has changed significantly over the

past 48 years. The most radical shift has been from the dominance of normative research in the

1Prior research in auditing and management accounting may also be considered governance research; however, we definegovernance research here as research relating to the overall corporate management, as opposed to a firm’s system of internal controls. While some governance papers occurred prior to the Gompers et al. 2003 paper, we note that mostgovernance research builds on their work. Our selection of governance is also an example of a newer “hot” topic thatis essentially borrowed from economics.

2 We note that our terms for methodology are not parallel: archival, experimental, and field study methodologies areexamples of positive research the study of what is, and theoretical work is similar the study of what is, from theperspective 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 asummation and synthesis of prior work.

3Our selection of topics and methodologies, while consistent with prior work, is open to criticism. For example, Abbott2004 provides a taxonomy of 36 different methodologies, compared to our seven. However, increasing our categorieshas the adverse effect of increasing the complexity and size of the paper, making it more difficult to group the thousandsof papers we examine into tractable categories.

636 Oler, Oler, and Skousen

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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 find 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 finance 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 find 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 reflect significant differences in topic

and methodology: from inception to 2007, 22 percent of CAR’s papers focus on audit issues,compared to 3.8 percent of RAST ’s. Papers dealing with financial 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 significantly 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

significant increase in the amount of time spent on research Leslie 2008. But faculty cannot

indefinitely 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 finding 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

firms, who look to academics to supply new generations of CPAs Solomon 2008.

The Final Report of the Treasury’s Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession also

reflects 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 finance 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 1960sto positive research that uses methods from finance, 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 financial

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

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TABLE 1

Proportion of Citations Made by Papers Published in Top Accounting Journalsa

Year Acctg. Fin. Econ. Psych. Stats. Mgnt.Other Acad.

Jrnls.Other

Citations

Papers

with NoCitations

Total

Numberof 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 861973 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 991987 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 1182001 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)



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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 reflect 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 financial information, and on the effects of re-

ported information on economic events.

This characterization is necessarily broad, reflecting the diversity of papers published over the past40 years. We also emphasize that this characterization is a reflection of what has been published asaccounting 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 benefit from our long-term overview of accounting research and how it has changed over time. Finally, our results are also useful for

4We also note that our selection of journals is “backfilled”—that is, we include all prior issues of newer journals, evenbefore they came to be commonly accepted as “A” journals. Because the inclusion of a journal on an “A” list isdetermined by individual schools at different times, we cannot provide a definitive 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

Paperswith No

Citations

TotalNumber

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%

aThis 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 anaggregate of remaining academic citations from law, sociology, education, health, and miscellaneous disciplines. “OtherCitations” 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.



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accounting practitioners in understanding the pressure on the education of the next generation of

auditors and tax professionals, especially since it seems more difficult 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 accountingfirm employees including their former supervisors and co-workers in accounting firms confirm

that the typical CPA firm employee has a limited understanding of exactly what accounting

academics do. Our overview of academic publications, and our proposed definition 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 fifth 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 Benefits as a Source of Merger Premiumsin 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. Beaver’s 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 finance paper. This ad hoc analysis suggests that

the citations-count heuristic alone cannot adequately define 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 define the term “accounting research.” TAR’s editorial

policy is to publish articles “reporting results of accounting research” from “any accounting-

related subject.” JAR’s first 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 significant 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

definition of accounting research does not suggest sloppy thinking or laziness; rather, it suggests

that accounting research is hard to define. Hopwood 2007 argues that accounting research has

5An elite university will often require six top-tier publications for someone to have a likely chance at tenure, and manyother research-intensive schools will require two to four top-tier publications. Lower-tier schools have reduced tenurerequirements, but typically pay less Carcello 2007.



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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 finance.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 identified 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 finds

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 difficult for accounting researchers to obtain publications needed for tenure, then fewer

potential accounting Ph.D. students may consider the field as a viable career. Plumlee et al. 2005

report expected shortages of accounting researchers for 2005–2008, especially in audit and tax

and report no indication that this trend will reverse in the near future—see 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 finance as opposed to students with a professional background as a CPA. Such

students are more likely to pursue a Ph.D. in financial 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.

6Interestingly, Ball and Brown 1968 was rejected by TAR as a non-accounting paper Dyckman and Zeff 1984.

7This is a “two-way street” in that papers potentially considered accounting have also appeared in finance journals.

8Of course, citations do not have a one-to-one correspondence with ideas.

9Swanson 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.



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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 respectabilityfrom peers in other fields, 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 find

that the field of academic accounting research is becoming more homogenized as it matures.

Specifically, they find that the proportion of nonfinancial accounting papers published in TAR has

decreased significantly from 1976 to 2006, and they find 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 findings extend to five 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 finds that accounting journals draw mostly from

other business fields 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 profile CAR over its first 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 finds that the

dominant topic and methodology over that period was financial accounting and archival,respectively.

12We extend Stone in both years and journals covered. Buchheit et al. 2002 com-

pare the proportionate publication rates for accounting, finance, management, and marketing, and

find that the proportionate number of accounting faculty publishing in top accounting journals is

significantly lower than the corresponding rates for other disciplines.13

More recently, Wakefield

2008 uses citations to estimate the relative influence of 22 accounting research journals from

2000 to 2006. She finds the most influential journals are JAR, TAR, JAE , AOS , and CAR, respec-

tively, with RAST as the 9th most influential 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.

10Within the general heading of “business” his largest grouping is “other,” which unfortunately is not broken down further.His next largest business subcategory is finance.

11Their specific classifications for topic and methodology are also similar to our own.

12As with Carnaghan et al. 1994, Stone’s categories of topic and methodology are similar to ours.

13Their results are corroborated by Swanson 2004 and Swanson et al. 2007.



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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 five JAR, 1963; AOS , 1976; JAE , 1979;CAR, 1984; RAST , 1996.

16Although 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, finance, 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 difficult to classify e.g., should a book on business valuation

be classified as “accounting” or “finance”?, 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: financial 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, field study, review, survey, theoretical, and normative i.e., research argu-

ing over what should be—and often advocating a particular accounting treatment—as opposed to

positive research. See the Appendix for further description.

Because we examine a 48–year time trend of changes in citations, topics, and methodologies,

we add information on significant 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 financial 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 fields and very high proportionate citations from books, legal cases, court

14We include RAST in our set of journals because its rapid rise of influence makes it representative of newer trends inaccounting 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.

15For example, TAR featured articles sectioned under “Teacher’s 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 unlessclearly warranted otherwise for example, a discussion paper on theoretical work that uses archival data to test thework’s implications.

17For 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, finance, statis-tics, and management may be more accurately described as applied fields.

18The listing of journal classifications is available from the authors.

19For selecting seminal accounting papers, we use the top four accounting papers as of 1992 listed by Brown 1996, plusFeltham and Ohlson 1995 and Sloan 1996.



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cases, and other sources, reflecting the practitioner-oriented early years of the discipline. However,

starting with 1967, the proportionate citations in accounting papers from accounting journals

begins to increase significantly.20

At the same time, citations from finance, 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 havereverted 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, finance, 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 finance and economics have

increased steadily from 1960 to 2007, with a few spikes e.g., 1978 for finance, 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 finance

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 finance and economics, but even by 2007, combined citations from finance 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 finance.

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 significantly 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 significant 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 finds 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 financial 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

20We also note that, with the inauguration of JAR, proportionate citations to “Other Citations” mainly books and courtcases begin to decrease in 1963.

21We use several acronyms to conserve space. “EMH” stands for the efficient market hypothesis, “WRDS” stands forWharton Research Data Services offered by the University of Pennsylvania, and “SOX” stands for the Sarbanes-OxleyAct of 2002.

22However, given the ad hoc nature of our timeline, we do not provide evidence on causality.



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financial accounting draw proportionately more from prior accounting research than from other

categories, at 44 percent for auditing and 43 percent for financial 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 field, Gompers et al. 2003,

published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, as well as substantially from finance. Mana-gerial accounting draws significantly from economics, but relatively little from finance.

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 finance, while managerial accounting has decreased its

borrowing from finance. Borrowing from economics also increased from decade to decade across

FIGURE 1

Proportion of Citations Made by Top Accounting Journals

50.0%

.

40.0%

C i t a t i o n s

20.0%

30.0%

P r o p o r t i o n o

ccouning

Finance

Economics

10.0%

0.0%

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

1963 JAR

Launched

1968 Ball

& Brown

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

Zimmerman1984 CAR

Launched

1996 Sloan;

RAST

Launched

2002 SOX

Passed1976 AOS

Launched

Hopwood1960 CRSP

Launched

This figure 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, finance, and economics areshown. CRSP refers to the Chicago Center for Research into Stock Price, EMH refers to the Efficient Market

Hypothesis, FASB refers to the FinancialAccounting 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.



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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 fields, 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 financial accounting papers has increased signifi-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 significantly in the

23Our finding on statistics is indicative of accounting research using primarily “tried and true” statistical methods. In manycases papers that show improved methodologies are published in finance journals e.g., Petersen 2009, published in the

Review of Financial Studies.

FIGURE 2

Number of Papers by Year

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


& Ohlson

1998 WRDS

Launched

1985

Healy

1987

1964 Compustat

Launched

1970 EMH

Articulated by

Eugene Fama

1978 Watts &

Zimmerman1984 CAR

Launched

1996 Sloan;

RAST

Launched

2002 SOX

Passed1976 AOS

Launched

1987

Hopwood1960 CRSP

Launched

This figure 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 Efficient 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.



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TABLE 2

Proportion of Citations Made by Papers Published in Top Accounting Journals by Researc

Panel A: Citations by Topic

TopicNumber of

Papers Accounting Finance Economics Psychology Statistics Managem

Financial Accounting 2577 43.1% 12.2% 6.5% 1.2% 0.8% 1.3%

Managerial Accounting 741 34.5% 4.1% 10.6% 4.3% 1.0% 9.2%

Auditing 684 44.0% 1.8% 3.7% 5.1% 1.0% 1.8%

Tax 237 36.3% 9.1% 8.6% 1.5% 0.6% 0.9%

Control/Governance 34 27.6% 18.2% 13.8% 1.4% 0.1% 3.0%

Other Topics 623 32.9% 5.6% 5.6% 3.5% 0.9% 5.6%

Panel B: Financial Accounting by Decade

Decade

Number of

Papers Accounting Finance Economics Psychology Statistics Management1960s 334 34.7% 3.0% 2.3% 0.2% 0.7% 1.8%

1970s 408 33.8% 10.2% 4.6% 1.8% 1.3% 3.1%

1980s 497 41.1% 13.8% 7.5% 2.3% 0.7% 1.2%

1990s 610 46.9% 13.0% 8.5% 1.0% 1.4% 0.9%

2000s 728 50.3% 15.6% 7.0% 0.6% 0.1% 0.6%

Panel C: Managerial Accounting by Decade

DecadeNumber of

Papers Accounting Finance Economics Psychology Statistics Management

1960s 113 38.1% 4.7% 3.6% 0.3% 1.9% 6.1%

1970s 139 32.5% 4.9% 5.3% 6.0% 1.6% 10.7%

1980s 164 33.4% 4.0% 8.8% 7.4% 0.4% 13.1%

1990s 182 31.6% 3.3% 17.5% 2.7% 1.0% 7.1% 2000s 143 38.7% 3.8% 14.6% 4.5% 0.1% 8.6%

A c c o u n t i n gH or i z o n s

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Panel D: Auditing by Decade

DecadeNumber of


1960s 33 25.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.9% 1.7% 3.8%

1970s 91 40.5% 0.7% 1.7% 3.7% 1.1% 3.1%

1980s 186 38.0% 1.6% 3.5% 7.3% 1.1% 2.1%

1990s 223 45.9% 1.9% 5.1% 5.0% 1.2% 1.3%

2000s 151 54.7% 3.2% 4.1% 4.3% 0.2% 1.0%

Panel E: Tax by Decade

DecadeNumber of


1960s 26 23.7% 2.5% 0.9% 0.0% 0.0% 1.7%

1970s 14 35.8% 3.9% 4.4% 1.1% 1.1% 2.6%

1980s 42 31.4% 6.3% 10.7% 1.4% 0.7% 0.9%

1990s 85 38.7% 9.6% 10.9% 1.5% 1.1% 0.3%

2000s 70 41.2% 13.7% 8.1% 2.1% 0.1% 0.9%

Panel F: Control/Governance by Decade

DecadeNumber of


1960s 0 NA NA NA NA NA NA

1970s 1 8.0% 4.0% 0.0% 8.0% 0.0% 0.0%

1980s 2 6.7% 7.9% 39.3% 0.0% 0.0% 1.1%

1990s 6 26.0% 18.0% 9.0% 0.0% 0.0% 4.2%

2000s 25 30.5% 19.6% 13.4% 1.5% 0.1% 3.0%


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Panel G: Other Topics by Decade

DecadeNumber of


1960s 140 24.5% 0.5% 0.9% 0.8% 1.2% 3.9%

1970s 124 28.7% 4.2% 4.7% 5.4% 0.9% 9.0%

1980s 137 33.0% 6.0% 9.3% 7.0% 0.4% 8.5%

1990s 147 39.4% 6.8% 5.6% 1.8% 1.4% 3.3%

2000s 75 42.3% 13.7% 9.1% 2.2% 0.1% 2.3%

aThis table shows the proportionate number of citations made by top accounting journals Accounting, Organizations and Society, Contempora

Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review from 1960 to 200author, broken out by research topic Panel A then by decade for each topic Panels B to G. Proportions are calculated based on the total cirepresents an aggregate of remaining academic citations from law, sociology, education, health, and miscellaneous disciplines, and “Other Citaother citations accounting regulations, books, working papers, etc..


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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 financial accounting papers, from about 42

percent in 1960 to about 65 percent in 2007. However, the most dramatic increase in financial

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 generallydecreased 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 financial

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 finance at almost 15 percent, and Panel B shows that the

trend is increasing over time. Theoretical research draws more from economics than other meth-

24Comparing absolute numbers can be misleading because we have only eight years of data from 2000 to 2007, versus tenyears 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 20051963 JAR

Launched

1968 Ball

& Brown

19 0

1973 FASB

replaces APB

1978 Watts &

1979 JAE


& Ohlson

1998 WRDS

Launched

1985

Healy

1987

1964 Compustat

Launched

1970 EMH

Articulated by

Eugene Fama

1978 Watts &

Zimmerman1984 CAR

Launched

1996 Sloan;

RAST

Launched

2002 SOX

Passed1976 AOS

Launched

1987

Hopwood1960 CRSP

Launched

This figure 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 low proportion of topics, for brevity governance is excluded from this figure.

CRSP refers to the Chicago Center for Research into Stock Price, EMH refers to the Efficient 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.



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TABLE 3

Proportion of Citations Made by Papers Published in Top Accounting Journals by Research M

Panel A: Citations by Methodology

TopicNumber

of Papers Accounting Finance Economics Psychology Statistics Managemen

Archival 2134 45.3% 14.4% 6.2% 0.4% 0.7% 1.2%

Experimental 745 36.7% 3.1% 5.0% 9.5% 1.0% 3.0%

Field Study 66 27.6% 3.2% 5.0% 7.3% 0.1% 17.6%

Review 124 41.8% 7.0% 5.9% 5.0% 0.9% 4.0%

Survey 156 30.3% 3.1% 2.8% 8.0% 0.7% 13.0%

Theoretical 844 40.0% 5.9% 14.6% 0.8% 1.2% 3.3%

Normative 827 32.8% 2.6% 2.9% 1.7% 0.7% 4.9%

Panel B: Archival by Decade

Decade

Number

of Papers Accounting Finance Economics Psychology Statistics Management

1960s 59 26.2% 8.3% 5.0% 0.0% 0.6% 2.7%

1970s 219 33.9% 12.5% 5.2% 0.7% 1.7% 2.1%

1980s 433 43.1% 14.5% 5.9% 0.9% 0.6% 1.3%

1990s 651 47.6% 13.4% 6.5% 0.2% 1.2% 1.1%

2000s 772 49.3% 16.4% 6.4% 0.2% 0.2% 0.8%

Panel C: Experimental by Decade

DecadeNumber


1960s 36 29.6% 3.2% 1.7% 4.2% 2.5% 2.8%

1970s 140 29.3% 4.4% 2.0% 8.9% 1.2% 4.9%

1980s 214 35.0% 2.4% 3.9% 10.4% 0.6% 3.4%

1990s 200 38.0% 2.6% 7.9% 9.1% 1.7% 1.8%

2000s 155 45.7% 3.5% 6.2% 10.3% 0.1% 2.4%


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Panel D: Field Study by Decade

DecadeNumber


1960s 0 NA NA NA NA NA NA

1970s 6 23.3% 11.3% 9.4% 16.4% 0.0% 27.9%

1980s 23 29.5% 2.3% 5.4% 10.0% 0.1% 20.9%

1990s 19 27.5% 1.4% 1.7% 4.3% 0.1% 11.9%

2000s 18 26.9% 3.5% 6.4% 3.9% 0.2% 16.2%

Panel E: Review by Decade

DecadeNumber


1960s 5 27.1% 1.5% 2.4% 1.1% 0.0% 1.6%

1970s 22 30.6% 5.3% 3.4% 7.9% 1.6% 5.2%

1980s 46 42.7% 4.9% 6.8% 7.2% 0.2% 4.9%

1990s 23 38.2% 9.2% 4.9% 2.8% 3.0% 3.4%

2000s 28 54.6% 10.8% 8.1% 1.6% 0.0% 2.3%

Panel F: Survey by Decade

DecadeNumber


1960s 10 6.1% 0.0% 3.3% 0.0% 1.4% 9.8%

1970s 35 25.6% 4.8% 2.7% 7.1% 0.7% 13.5%

1980s 48 29.2% 3.1% 3.3% 14.2% 0.3% 15.5%

1990s 30 34.6% 1.4% 1.7% 4.8% 1.5% 8.6%

2000s 33 40.7% 3.5% 2.8% 5.5% 0.2% 13.5%


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Panel G: Theoretical by Decade

DecadeNumber


1960s 48 34.9% 7.2% 6.0% 0.0% 0.7% 6.5%

1970s 206 39.2% 6.1% 6.3% 1.3% 1.6% 5.3%

1980s 172 33.9% 6.6% 16.4% 1.3% 1.5% 2.8%

1990s 255 40.7% 4.5% 19.6% 0.6% 1.4% 2.7%

2000s 163 48.0% 6.8% 18.0% 0.3% 0.0% 1.3%

Panel H: Normative by Decade

DecadeNumber


1960s 488 33.3% 1.5% 1.3% 0.2% 1.1% 2.8%

1970s 149 31.9% 3.6% 3.1% 2.7% 0.3% 7.9%

1980s 92 30.2% 6.0% 9.3% 7.2% 0.3% 11.9%

1990s 75 32.0% 3.2% 4.3% 3.0% 0.1% 4.5%

2000s 23 40.3% 5.6% 4.6% 0.6% 0.1% 5.2%


Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review from 1960 to 200author, broken out by research methodology Panel A then by decade for each method Panels B to H. Proportions are calculated based on Journals” represents an aggregate of remaining academic citations from law, sociology, education, health, and miscellaneous disciplines, aaggregate of all other citations accounting regulations, books, working papers, etc..


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odologies also at almost 15 percent and experimental research draws significantly from psychol-

ogy almost 10 percent. Field studies draw the least from prior accounting and are much more

dependent on management. We find 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 themid-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

25We are ignoring reviews here, which may be viewed as a “pseudo-methodology” because they are concerned withsummarizing 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 20051963 JAR

Launched

1968 Ball

& Brown

19 0

1973 FASB

replaces APB

1978 Watts &

1979 JAE


& Ohlson

1998 WRDS

Launched

1985

Healy

1987

1964 Compustat

Launched

1970 EMH

Articulated by

Eugene Fama

1978 Watts &

Zimmerman1984 CAR

Launched

1996 Sloan;

RAST

Launched

2002 SOX

Passed1976 AOS

Launched

1987

Hopwood1960 CRSP

Launched

This figure 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

field studies, reviews, and surveys make up a relatively low proportion of methodologies, for brevity they are

excluded from this figure. CRSP refers to the Chicago Center for Research into Stock Price, EMH refers to the

Efficient 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.



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other methodologies. This significant increase is preceded by the availability of significant data

sets such as CRSP and Compustat, which allowed archival researchers to investigate questions that

were previously only answerable using experimental or field 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 4 –6 break out citations, topics, and methodologies by journal, and help to characterize

the “flavor” 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 finance 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 finance .

Table 5 examines paper topics by decade and journal. The increasing dominance of financial

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 financial 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 financial accounting research 64 percent of papers in the 1990s to 50

percent in the 2000s; all other journals have increased the proportion of financial 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 financial 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 paperspublished 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

financial 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 find 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 find 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 .

26This is consistent with two of the three new journals JAE and RAST launched from 1979 to 1996 being stronglyoriented toward archival research. Only CAR has published a significant number of experimental papers. JAE and RAST have published almost no experimental papers.



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TABLE 4

Proportion of Citations Made by Papers Published in Top Accounting Journals, by Jou

Panel A: Summary of Top Six Accounting Journals

JournalNumber


AOS 520 30.2% 4.3% 4.2% 9.4% 0.2% 13.5%

CAR 527 48.0% 8.6% 8.8% 2.3% 2.9% 1.6%

JAE 536 43.8% 18.1% 10.8% 0.1% 0.2% 0.8%

JAR 1469 39.5% 9.0% 7.2% 2.2% 0.8% 1.7%

RAST 208 49.8% 11.5% 9.6% 0.2% 0.2% 0.8%

TAR 1636 39.0% 6.0% 4.8% 1.8% 0.8% 2.7%

Panel B: Accounting, Organizations and Society, by Decade

Decade

Number

of Papers Accounting Finance Economics Psychology Statistics Management1970s 59 27.9% 7.5% 5.4% 12.8% 0.1% 28.6%

1980s 193 30.4% 4.7% 4.8% 13.7% 0.3% 15.9%

1990s 169 28.6% 2.7% 2.5% 5.0% 0.0% 6.7%

2000s 99 34.1% 4.2% 5.5% 6.2% 0.1% 11.5%

Panel C: Contemporary Accounting Research, by Decade

DecadeNumber


1980s 101 41.2% 7.3% 9.7% 2.6% 1.2% 3.1%

1990s 237 47.8% 9.6% 10.0% 2.1% 5.8% 1.4%

2000s 189 52.0% 8.1% 6.6% 2.4% 0.1% 1.1%


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Panel D: Journal of Accounting and Economics, by Decade

DecadeNumber


1970s 8 17.8% 20.6% 19.7% 0.0% 0.3% 0.0%

1980s 102 37.1% 17.6% 11.3% 0.0% 0.2% 1.0%

1990s 228 45.7% 16.4% 10.3% 0.1% 0.2% 0.9%

2000s 198 46.2% 20.3% 10.7% 0.2% 0.2% 0.5%

Panel E: Journal of Accounting Research, by Decade

DecadeNumber


1960s 147 29.1% 4.5% 4.1% 1.2% 1.4% 2.7%

1970s 331 33.2% 7.4% 4.7% 2.7% 1.5% 2.5%

1980s 433 40.7% 9.1% 7.8% 2.6% 0.8% 1.1%

1990s 294 45.4% 7.2% 9.3% 2.4% 0.2% 1.9%

2000s 264 44.8% 15.5% 8.6% 1.0% 0.1% 0.6%

Panel F: Review of Accounting Studies, by Decade

DecadeNumber


1990s 59 43.6% 6.3% 12.9% 0.1% 0.3% 1.2%

2000s 149 52.2% 13.6% 8.3% 0.3% 0.1% 0.7%

Panel G: The Accounting Review, by Decade

DecadeNumber


1960s 499 33.0% 2.0% 1.4% 0.1% 1.0% 3.2%

1970s 379 35.0% 6.4% 3.7% 2.5% 1.3% 4.4% 1980s 199 37.1% 7.7% 6.0% 3.5% 0.8% 1.7%


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Panel G: The Accounting Review, by Decade

DecadeNumber


1990s 266 42.6% 7.3% 10.0% 2.0% 0.5% 1.2% 2000s 293 52.1% 9.6% 6.6% 2.4% 0.2% 1.6%


Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Ac counting Studies, and The Accounting Review for papers with at l journal. Panel A presents aggregate results from 1960 to 2007. Panels B to G show proportions for each journal separately, by decade. Proporticitations. “Other Academic Journals” represents an aggregate of remaining academic citations from law, sociology, education, health, and miCitations” represents an aggregate of all other citations accounting regulations, books, working papers, etc..


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TABLE 5

Research Topic by Decade and Journala

Panel A: Summary of Top Six Accounting Journals, by DecadeDecade Number of Papers Financial Managerial Audit Tax

1960s 792 48.6% 16.7% 4.8% 3.9%

1970s 810 52.8% 17.4% 11.9% 2.1%

1980s 1038 48.3% 15.9% 17.9% 4.0%

1990s 1278 48.4% 14.6% 17.9% 6.7%

2000s 1196 61.2% 12.0% 12.6% 5.9%

Panel B: Summary of Top Six Accounting Journals, by Journal

Journal Number of Papers Financial Managerial Audit Tax

AOS 524 16.6% 33.8% 15.8% 1.7%

CAR 532 58.1% 10.3% 22.2% 5.6%

JAE 557 52.8% 9.5% 4.3% 6.5%

JAR 1529 59.0% 12.0% 15.4% 4.8%

RAST 210 83.8% 10.5% 3.8% 1.0%

TAR 1762 50.9% 15.8% 13.1% 5.4%

Panel C: Accounting, Organizations and Society, by Decade

Decade Number of Papers Financial Managerial Audit Tax

1970s 60 20.0% 26.7% 11.7% 0.0%

1980s 196 16.3% 38.3% 15.3% 1.5%

1990s 169 15.4% 26.6% 19.5% 0.6%

2000s 99 17.2% 41.4% 13.1% 5.1%

Panel D: Contemporary Accounting Research, by Decade


1980s 101 59.4% 14.9% 20.8% 1.0%

1990s 242 63.6% 7.0% 19.8% 5.0% 2000s 189 50.3% 12.2% 25.9% 9.0%


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Panel E: Journal of Accounting and Economics, by Decade


1970s 8 50.0% 12.5% 0.0% 0.0%

1980s 108 58.3% 1.9% 5.6% 4.6% 1990s 242 45.0% 14.9% 4.5% 6.2%

2000s 199 59.3% 7.0% 3.5% 8.0%

Panel F: Journal of Accounting Research, by Decade


1960s 178 52.8% 19.7% 3.9% 6.2%

1970s 353 58.4% 13.9% 14.7% 0.6%

1980s 434 56.9% 11.3% 18.4% 3.7%

1990s 300 53.3% 10.0% 23.7% 11.3%

2000s 264 73.9% 7.6% 9.8% 3.8%

Panel G: Review of Accounting Studies, by Decade


1990s 59 74.6% 18.6% 5.1% 0.0%

2000s 151 87.4% 7.3% 3.3% 1.3%

Panel H: The Accounting Review, by Decade


1960s 614 47.4% 15.8% 5.0% 3.3%

1970s 389 53.0% 19.3% 9.5% 3.9%

1980s 199 49.7% 12.1% 24.6% 8.5%

1990s 266 47.4% 18.0% 23.7% 9.0%

2000s 294 59.5% 11.6% 17.3% 6.8%

aThis table shows the proportion of papers published by topic in top accounting journals Accounting, Organizations and Society, Contempora

Accounting and Economics, Journal of Acc ounting Research, Review of Ac counting Studies, and The Accounting Review for papers with at 2007. Panel A presents aggregate results by decade. Panel B presents aggregate results by journal. Panels C to H show results for each journ


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TABLE 6

Research Method by Decade and Journala

Panel A: Summary of Top Six Accounting Journals, by Decade

DecadeNumber of

Papers Archival Experimental Field Study Review Survey

1960s 792 9.6% 4.9% 0.0% 0.8% 1.6%

1970s 810 28.3% 17.9% 0.9% 2.8% 4.3%

1980s 1038 42.1% 20.6% 2.2% 4.6% 4.6%

1990s 1278 52.1% 15.8% 1.5% 1.9% 2.3%

2000s 1196 64.7% 13.0% 1.5% 2.3% 2.8%

Panel B: Summary of Top Six Accounting Journals, by Journal

JournalNumber of


AOS 524 10.7% 19.8% 12.0% 6.5% 14.3%

CAR 532 48.9% 18.8% 0.8% 2.1% 2.4%

JAE 557 81.9% 0.7% 0.0% 5.9% 0.0%

JAR 1529 47.8% 20.1% 0.0% 1.8% 0.3%

RAST 210 63.3% 2.4% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

TAR 1762 31.0% 13.3% 0.0% 1.3% 3.7%

Panel C: Accounting, Organizations and Society, by Decade

DecadeNumber of


1970s 60 8.3% 11.7% 11.7% 5.0% 16.7%

1980s 196 9.2% 23.5% 11.7% 7.7% 13.3%

1990s 169 10.7% 16.6% 11.2% 4.7% 9.5%

2000s 99 15.2% 23.2% 14.1% 8.1% 23.2%


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Panel D: Contemporary Accounting Research, by Decade

DecadeNumber of


1980s 101 36.6% 8.9% 0.0% 3.0% 5.9%

1990s 242 50.4% 18.6% 0.0% 2.5% 1.7%

2000s 189 53.4% 24.3% 2.1% 1.1% 1.6%

Panel E: Journal of Accounting and Economics, by Decade

DecadeNumber of


1970s 8 62.5% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

1980s 108 79.6% 0.0% 0.0% 7.4% 0.0%

1990s 242 83.5% 0.8% 0.0% 2.9% 0.0%

2000s 199 81.9% 1.0% 0.0% 9.0% 0.0%

Panel F: Journal of Accounting Research, by Decade

DecadeNumber of


1960s 178 24.7% 17.4% 0.0% 2.2% 0.0% 1970s 353 36.0% 25.2% 0.0% 2.3% 0.0%

1980s 434 45.4% 24.9% 0.0% 3.5% 0.0%

1990s 300 55.0% 19.7% 0.0% 0.3% 1.3%

2000s 264 75.0% 8.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.4%

Panel G: Review of Accounting Studies, by Decade

DecadeNumber of


1990s 59 42.4% 3.4% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

2000s 151 71.5% 2.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%


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Panel H: The Accounting Review, by Decade

DecadeNumber of


1960s 614 5.2% 1.3% 0.0% 0.3% 2.1%

1970s 389 23.7% 12.6% 0.0% 3.1% 6.4%

1980s 199 49.7% 25.6% 0.0% 3.5% 8.0%

1990s 266 50.4% 24.8% 0.0% 0.8% 2.3%

2000s 294 64.3% 20.4% 0.0% 0.0% 2.0%

aThis table shows the proportion of papers published by research method in top accounting journals Accounting, Organizations and Society, C

Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies, and The Accounting Review for paper1960 to 2007. Panel A presents aggregate results by decade. Panel B presents aggregate results by journal. Panels C to H show proportions for


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Theoretical research is also declining in all journals, most significantly 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 financial 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 financial

reporting, modified from Nikolai et al. 2007 to help us classify these areas.27

This is necessarily

a simplification, but we believe it captures the essential focus of the various streams of accounting

research. As shown in Figure 5, financial 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 firm

and capital markets. Managerial accounting focuses on the link between accounting informationand 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 Sloan’s 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 finance and economics. Any proposed characterization based on prior

accounting publications must be broad enough to include financial and managerial accounting

obviously, auditing, tax, and possibly governance. Kinney 2001, 278 defines 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 Kinney’s 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 financial information, and on the effects of re-

ported information on economic events.

27We place our proposed characterization after our discussion of trends in accounting research to emphasize that it isbased on the data we observe. It is not a hypothesis that we attempt to support with data; it is a description that wederive from the data.

28He enumerates a nonexclusive list of these key characteristics: accruals, recognition bias, measurement, matching, andaccounting rules versus discretion.



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The term “financial 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, financial information relates to businesses, but account-

ing research can also extend to other entities such as governments and nonprof

oler et.al

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