The DOI matches its OpenAlex record; 3 of the 3 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Positive Accounting Theory: A Ten Year Perspective.
Open accessAbstract
Abstract This paper reviews and critiques the positive accounting literature following publication of Watts and Zimmerman (1978, 1979). The 1978 paper helped generate the positive accounting literature which offers an explanation of accounting practice, suggests the importance of contracting costs, and has led to the discovery of some previously unknown empirical regularities. The 1979 paper produced a methodological debate that has not been very productive. This paper attempts to remove some common misconceptions about methodology that surfaced in the debate. It also suggests ways to improve positive research in accounting choice. The most important of these improvements is tighter links between the theory and the empirical tests. A second suggested improvement is the development of models that recognize the endogeneity among the variables in the regressions. A third improvement is reduction in measurement errors in both the dependent and independent variables in the regressions.
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Citations
Cites
Coase, R. H. (1937) · Economica · doi:10.1111/j.1468-0335.1937.tb00002.x · Cited by 23,972
Determinants of corporate borrowing
Myers, S. C. (1977) · Journal of Financial Economics · doi:10.1016/0304-405x(77)90015-0 · Cited by 13,169
Evidence of Earnings Management from the Provision for Bad Debts
McNichols, M., & Wilson, G. P. (1988) · Journal of Accounting Research · doi:10.2307/2491176 · Cited by 919
Cited by
Healy, P. M., & Palepu, K. G. (2001) · Journal of Accounting and Economics · doi:10.1016/s0165-4101(01)00018-0 · Cited by 8,097
Healy, P. M., & Palepu, K. (2001) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.258514 · Cited by 2,097
Mandatory CSR and sustainability reporting: economic analysis and literature review
Christensen, H. B., Hail, L., & Leuz, C. (2021) · Review of Accounting Studies · doi:10.1007/s11142-021-09609-5 · Cited by 1,923
Empirical research on accounting choice
Fields, T. D., Lys, T. Z., & Vincent, L. (2001) · Journal of Accounting and Economics · doi:10.1016/s0165-4101(01)00028-3 · Cited by 1,759
The role of information and financial reporting in corporate governance and debt contracting
Armstrong, C. S., Guay, W. R., & Weber, J. P. (2010) · Journal of Accounting and Economics · doi:10.1016/j.jacceco.2010.10.001 · Cited by 1,494
Metadata
- Authors
- Watts, R. L., & Zimmerman, J. L.
- Venue
- The Accounting Review
- Publisher
- American Accounting Association
- Published
- 1990-01-01
- Volume
- 65
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 131-156
- ISSN
- 0001-4826 (ISSN-L)
- 1558-7967
- OpenAlex
- W119367497
- Cited by
- 2,266
- References
- 3
- FWCI
- 58.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Positive Accounting Theory: A Ten Year Perspective. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2308/tar-9603274032
- The paper
- Watts, R. L., & Zimmerman, J. L. (1990). Positive Accounting Theory: A Ten Year Perspective. The Accounting Review. https://doi.org/10.2308/tar-9603274032
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
