Thoughts on the Divide between Theoretical and Empirical Research in Accounting

This paper provides our comments on Chen, Gerakos, Glode, and Taylor's (2016) panel session held at the 2015 Junior Accounting Theory Conference on the relation between theoretical and empirical research in accounting. Consistent with a declining fraction of theory papers in accounting journals, we show that the number of accounting theorists has been stable since the 2001-2005 period, while the rest of the field has grown. We offer our perspectives on how the knowledge generated by accounting researchers depends on a healthy interaction between theory and empirical work. We also comment on and add to Chen et al.'s (2016) discussion of how to improve the links between theoretical and empirical work.