A Preliminary Study On Accounting Economics

The current accounting theory research is facing such embarrassing problems as "accounting theory jungle","no consensus on accounting’s discipline attribute","the more the point research and the less the integrated study". Aimed at these predicament, this paper sets three research purposes:First, to make a comprehensive and systematic description of the "accounting theory jungle" in order to solve the problem of "not finding the forest but the trees"; Secondly, to study and determine the discipline attribute of accounting in order to solve this core problem of accounting basic theory; Third, to re-examine "accounting theory jungle" from the perspective of accounting’s economic attribute in order to build the basic framework of "Economics of Accounting" as a general platform for the financial accounting theory research. After the "introduction", this article first makes a systematic description of "accounting theory jungle" using one chapter, and then studies the accounting’s discipline attribute using another chapter, and finally to construct "Economics of Accounting" with three chapters.This article is divided into six chapters.The first chapter is "the introduction". This chapter first states the selected topic background, research purpose and its significance; then makes basic research commitment and explanation on the topic of the thesis, and briefly reviews the domestic and foreign research dynamic and related literature; Finally explains the paper’s main contents, research methods and main innovation..The second chapter is the review of "accounting theory jungle". Using the term "accounting theory jungle" to call the various and huge collection of accounting theory, This chapter reviews the accounting theory jungle, from the five dimensions: the nature of accounting, building approaches of accounting theory, accounting theory research paradigm, the evolution history of accounting theory and the mainstream and frontier of accounting theory research The third chapter is "accounting’s discipline attribute". Accounting’s discipline attribute is not only the core problem of basic accounting theory, but is also the new perspective selected to review the "accounting theory jungle", having a pivotal position in this papert. This chapter uses three steps to demonstrate accounting’s discipline attribute:first, to describe respectively the existing literature supporting accounting’s economic attribute and the existing literature supporting accounting’s management attribute; Secondly, on the basis of the inductive evidence, to put forward the hypothesis of having both economics and management attributes; Finally, to deduce the dual discipline attribute of accounting. The research conclusion is that accounting has the dual discipline attributes with financial accounting having the economics attribute and management accounting having management attribute.Considering the basic commitment of this study, we only choose the economic attribute perspective of financial accounting for further study in the next three chapters, in order to achieve the above third goal, namely to build a basic framework of accounting economics. The construction of accounting economics is decomposed into three levels research in this paper completed by the following three chapters.The fourth chapter is "Building of accounting economics:theoretical basis". According to the above research design, this chapter begins on the first level of work, namely to demonstrate the whole evolvement of economics, recent development and future trends, preparing theoretical basis for the construction of accounting economics. This chapter introduces the economics theories’evolution and development in the order of classical economics, new classical economics, modern economics, and contemporary economics, and then analyze the law of the evolution and development of economics and development trend. We sum up two mainstream law throughout the evolution, also find that the economics have three kinds of trends coming true soon.The fifth chapter is "Building of accounting economics:deductive reasoning". This chapter is the most important of this paper, its task is to complete the second level’s study, which systematically explore financial accounting nodes endogenously in economic theory, and deduce the basic framework of accounting economics according to the nodes and the relevant economic theory. This chapter, in turn, deduces the accounting nodes in classical economics, marxism economics, new classical economics, information economics and new institutional economics, and then deduce the frameworks of accounting economics correspondingly according to the nodes and related economics theories. Hereafter, the chapter examines the impact on accounting economics of the modern financial theory, the econometrics, the regulation of political economics, the experimental economics, the behavioral economics, the evolutionary economics, the welfare economics, and the new political economics.The sixth chapter is "Building of Accounting Economics:empirical evidence". This chapter is devoted to the research of the third level designed above, that is, using the constructed accounting economics framework in the fifth chapter to re-examine the accounting theory jungle described in the second chapter, in order to systematically search for the historical experience evidence of accounting economics’ existence. The results show that the accounting theory jungle is almost is a colorful, messy set of accounting economics research instance collection..So far, we first deduce the basic framework of accounting economics (chapter5)with the logic deduction from economics, which is a typical normative research; and then review the existing accounting theory jungle with accounting economics framework, finding the whole accounting theory jungle (excluding the exception) are attributable to accounting economics, and this constitutes empirical evidence of the accounting economics research (chapter6). Thus, the construction of accounting economics gets "the unity of the logic and history", which strongly proves that the establishment of "accounting economics". This is the right ultimate goal for this article to achieve.