We Don't Replicate Academic Accounting Research Or Do We?

Abstract

The purpose of this introduction to this mini-forum on replication research in accounting is to explain the thought process behind the decision to publish back to back in the same issue of Contemporary Accounting Research two articles that have a substantial overlap in motivation, data and analysis. Indeed the two articles are definitely replications of each; albeit there are differences in the design choices that each set of authors made leading to dramatic differences in sample sizes. However, despite what differences there are, the articles arrive at the same conclusions. The topic is the rise of analysts’ provision of cash flow forecasts and the decline of the accruals anomaly – certainly issues that bear careful examination given the controversy associated over the relative sophistication of analysts’ cash flow forecasts and the changes over time in the most widely accepted and researched anomaly, the accruals anomaly. Nonetheless, given our alleged lack of a replication culture in accounting, I decided that a brief introduction and justification was in order as part of presenting these two articles and their associated commentaries.