[Opinion]
The relevance of accounting academic research for the standard setting process has been the subject of debate for decades. Already in the 1990s both standard-setters (Beresford, 1994; Leisenring and Johnson, 1994; Beresford and Johnson, 1995) and academics (Schipper, 1994; Swieringa, 1998) suggested that there should be a greater role for academic research in the standard setting process and lamented the fact that in practice this seems difficult to achieve. Prominent accounting researchers who had been involved in the standards setting process have for some time encouraged stronger links to be forged between academics and standard setters (see Schipper, 1994). Two decades later the issue remains unresolved. Some argue that academic research has contributed to understanding the role of accounting information in decision-making and its impact in capital markets but it has had scant influence on the standards themselves (Gebhardt, 2008, Granof and Zeff, 2008). This has led some commentators to be quite sceptical about the usefulness of accounting research for policy making and to argue that very little of this research can be directly translated into information that can support the policy choices. […]
