Senior Scholars
Seminar Sessions

Dr. Ball will share reflections on how he began writing about accounting early in his career and why he has maintained a lifelong commitment to the profession. He will explore the value of reading broadly, the pitfalls of publishing solely in pursuit of tenure, and the significance of working alongside thoughtful and dedicated scholars.

Moderator: David Ziebart, University of Kentucky
Panelists: Sudipta Basu, Temple University and William Cready, University of Texas at Dallas

"An approximate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem." - John Tukey

Empirical inference in accounting commonly involves the production of exact “it is statistically significant” existence answers where the underlying approximate problem that is truly of interest concerns the importance or meaningfulness of so identified effects/relations/differences. Channeling Ray Ball, the core problem isn’t whether earnings management exists, but rather how “rife” it is or isn’t. This conflicted state of affairs leads to a research environment wherein obtained significance outcomes concerning existence (which may not even be in doubt) are commonly understood as speaking to the inherently approximate problem of meaningfulness. The seminar addresses how such an "exact answers to approximate problems" approach hinders productive inference with a particular focus on how it undercuts replication relevance.

Moderator: David Ziebart, University of Kentucky
Panelists: Sudipta Basu, Temple University and William Cready, University of Texas at Dallas

As double-entry accounting developed and spread, two questions were of primary importance:

1. Why is double-entry better than single-entry accounting?
2. What are the limits to the use of double-entry accounting?

A lot of answers have been given to the first question but, as yet, nothing definitive. The second question, however, was answered completely by Cayley in 1894: double-entry techniques can be broadly used to capture and convey almost anything. But what should it be used to capture and convey? The measurement school attempted to answer this question by probing the nature of income, costs, etc. The information content school attempted to answer this question by looking at the uses to which accounting information is put. In our view, both these schools of thought have reached the point of diminishing returns. More importantly, both de-emphasize – or completely ignore – double-entry. Is there a way forward that preserves the insights gained by the measurement and information schools and incorporates double-entry? In this talk we will explore the limitations of the measurement and the information content schools, then introduce an approach that has the potential to extend the information approach in a way that captures double-entry.

Moderator: David Ziebart, University of Kentucky
Panelists: Rick Antle, Yale University and John Fellingham, The Ohio State University