Discontinuous Distribution of Test Statistics Around Significance Thresholds in Empirical Accounting Studies

IF 4.9 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS, FINANCE

Journal of Accounting Research Pub Date : 2024-10-01 DOI:10.1111/1475-679x.12579

XIN CHANG, HUASHENG GAO, WEI LI

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Examining test statistics from articles in six leading accounting journals, we detect discontinuities in their distributions around conventional significance thresholds (p‐values of 0.05 and 0.01) and find an unusual abundance of test statistics that are just significant. Further analysis reveals that these discontinuities are more prominent in studies with smaller samples and are more salient in experimental than in archival studies. The discontinuity discrepancy between experimental and archival studies relates to several proxies for researcher degrees of freedom. Nevertheless, this evidence does not imply that experimental research is more prone to questionable research practices than archival studies. Overall, our findings speak to the concern of whether accounting researchers could exercise undisclosed discretion to obtain and report statistically significant results. Based on our results, a healthy skepticism of some just‐significant test statistics is warranted.

查看原文本刊更多论文

实证会计研究中检验统计量在显著性阈值附近的不连续分布

通过对六种主要会计期刊论文中的检验统计量进行研究，我们发现这些统计量的分布在常规显著性临界值（p 值为 0.05 和 0.01）附近存在不连续性，并发现大量检验统计量具有非同寻常的显著性。进一步的分析表明，这些不连续性在样本较小的研究中更为突出，在实验研究中比在档案研究中更为明显。实验研究与档案研究之间的不连续性差异与研究者自由度的几个代理变量有关。尽管如此，这些证据并不意味着实验研究比档案研究更容易出现有问题的研究实践。总体而言，我们的研究结果说明了人们对会计研究人员是否可以行使未公开的自由裁量权来获取和报告具有统计意义的结果的担忧。基于我们的研究结果，我们有理由对一些刚刚具有显著性的测试统计结果持健康的怀疑态度。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Accounting Research BUSINESS, FINANCE-

CiteScore

7.80

自引率

6.80%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Accounting Research is a general-interest accounting journal. It publishes original research in all areas of accounting and related fields that utilizes tools from basic disciplines such as economics, statistics, psychology, and sociology. This research typically uses analytical, empirical archival, experimental, and field study methods and addresses economic questions, external and internal, in accounting, auditing, disclosure, financial reporting, taxation, and information as well as related fields such as corporate finance, investments, capital markets, law, contracting, and information economics.