A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW OF RESEARCH CONCERNING ACCOUNTING CHANGES IN POST-COMMUNIST ECONOMIES

Abstract

This paper reviews 107 academic research publications appearing between 1988 and 2011 that studied accounting changes in post-communist economies. While there has been a significant amount of prior research focusing on accounting changes in economies undergoing the transition from communism to a market economy, there has been a lack of synthesis and overview of the literature in this field. In order to develop such a synthesis and overview, the reviewed publications have been categorized according to a framework proposed by Barbu (2006), and then further classified into changes pertaining to accounting institutions, changes in accounting systems (i.e. legislation, principles and standards), and interactions between economic changes and accounting changes. We then interpret our findings through several theoretical frameworks that provide explanations regarding relationships between economic changes (i.e. in particular the transition from communism to a market economy) and accounting changes. This analysis has led to a proposed new framework to better understand relationships between economic changes and accounting changes during the transition from communism to a market-based economy.