Knowledge that Transforms

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of The Accounting Review, I was asked to provide my forecast of the future of tax research in accounting. In sum, my opinion is that the future is bright and full of opportunities for tax scholars. Governments are altering corporate income tax laws in fundamental ways and questions about how these changes affect investment, investment location, income shifting, corporate capital structure, and financial reporting will be very important aspects to study. New and newly used taxes, such as tariffs and endowment taxes, will allow for novel paths of inquiry and accountants should contribute. The use of AI by tax authorities and taxpayers could alter both tax enforcement and tax planning. The increasing access to administrative data, the use of field experiments and field studies, and employing survey methods to obtain data should expand the settings available to study and improve identification.

On the occasion of The Accounting Review’s centennial, I bring renewed urgency to the need for management accounting research to have practical relevance given the budgetary pressures on higher education. Practically relevant research is also relevant in the classroom. I present three ideas to increase the practical and teaching relevance of management accounting research. First, study the heterogeneity in management accounting practices across industries and embrace single-industry research deep dives. Second, focus on the role of management accounting in decision-making, planning, and forecasting. Third, explore the connections of management accounting with other subfields in accounting as well as other business disciplines.

We examine the relation between debt contract renegotiation costs and contract design. We use a plausibly exogenous shock to expected renegotiation costs arising from a change in the taxation of debt renegotiations to show that, as renegotiation costs decline, the maturity of debt contracts lengthens, the initial likelihood of covenant violation increases, and the use of performance pricing provisions becomes less frequent. The evidence indicates that ex ante allocation of cash flow rights and ex post reallocation of decision rights through renegotiation are local substitutes, where the preference for one mechanism versus the other depends, at least in part, on renegotiation costs. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

We study the investment efficiency of the historical cost and fair value measurement rules when a reporting firm and its investors confront higher-order uncertainty inferring the behavior of others. Although all investors are attentive to the firm’s report, the firm and investors incorrectly believe only some investors are attentive. We find that a report prepared under the historical cost rule yields greater investment efficiency than under the fair value rule if and only if (1) the investors are badly calibrated, (2) the firm’s production technology exhibits sufficiently strong returns to scale, (3) the firm’s productivity realization is sufficiently negatively correlated with market returns, and (4) the firm is sufficiently well calibrated about its investors’ attentiveness.

This commentary considers experimental and archival auditing research published over the past 50 years and suggests directions for future research. Starting with Ashton (1974a) and Simunic (1980), I discuss major research themes occurring in these literatures. I use Brunswik’s lens model as a metaphor that highlights methodological complementarities and opportunities for convergence to address important issues. Possible topics to consider further in future research include the determinants of audit quality, the structure of audit firms and audit regulation, the effect of emerging technologies like AI, teaching and supporting future auditors, potential enhancements of the audit report, and expansion of the services that auditors provide to society.

Cash flows play an important role in the accounting and finance literature. They are a major component of earnings, serve as a benchmark for earnings and accruals, and are an input to firm valuation. Although accrual measurement has been extensively studied, research on cash flow measurement remains limited. We review cash flow proxies researchers use in prior literature and highlight the importance of (1) identifying and defining the cash flow construct of interest based on the underlying research question and other constructs of interest and (2) selecting a cash flow proxy that minimizes measurement error and maps well into its construct. We also examine the challenges researchers face in measuring cash flows and demonstrate how measurement choices can affect the magnitude of coefficient estimates and statistical inferences. Finally, our study provides a framework researchers can follow to strengthen the construct validity of cash flow proxies.