会计的社会功用:基于非历史成本研究的回顾

The Economic Crisis and the Scapegoat Function of Accounting:a literature review of non-historical cost research

本文回顾了《会计研究》自创刊以来所发表的非历史成本计量属性研究的学术论文,按照"以义制利"和"趋利舍义"两分法,将所有非历史成本计量属性的论文分为两组,分别讨论这两组研究的逻辑思路和主要观点。与通常的回顾类学术文献不同,本文将非历史成本计量属性回顾与目前国际上关于金融危机和公允价值的争论联系起来,提出会计事实上已经承担了一种全新的社会功用:替罪羊角色。本文认为,会计之所以被赋予经济危机事件替罪羊,除了会计系统自身特征外,包括非历史成本计量属性在内的会计理论研究中过分强调会计方法选择的经济后果,也为会计事后被指责提供了相应的理论准备。本文为当前关于经济危机和公允价值的争论提供了一种新的解释视角。

We review all non-historical cost research papers published on Accounting Research and divide them into two groups,economic consequences focus(ECF)and theoretical consistency focus(TCF),then discuss all papers dichotomously about their inherent logic and main viewpoints.Different from normal literature review papers,we connect our discussing of non-historical cost papers with the financial crisis and accusation against fair value accounting happened in USA.We argue that accounting is in fact serving as the scapegoat for the financial crisis.We further argue that accounting research,such as non-historical cost papers reviewed in this paper,demonstrates a strong tendency of over emphasis on ECF,which in turn provided anecdotic theory basis for this accusation.This paper contributes to the literature of economic crisis and fair value research by adding a new perspective.