Exam 2: Accounting Theory and Accounting Research

The roots of behavioral research lie in the field(s) of:

One hypothesis of agency theory is that management attempts to maximize its own welfare by minimizing the various agency costs arising from monitoring and contracting.

The normative nature of the decision-model approach has led to criticism that this method is non-scientific.

Positive accounting research attempts to describe "what is" and determine how things should be.

The decision-model approach to accounting research seeks to determine what information users of accounting information want.

Inductive approaches to accounting theory usually attempt to be descriptive.

Agency theory holds that management always tries to maximize the value of the firm.

Of the research methods discussed in the text, the critical accounting approach is the closest to the standard-setting function.

Which of the following statements is true?

Empirical research is:

What is critical accounting, and in what way does it differ from all of the other research areas discussed in the text?

Because accounting is not very much concerned with the human element, we can expect it to be more precise in its measurement and predictions than are the natural sciences.

The objective of information theory analysis is:

Critical accounting research assumes a sharp separation between the researcher and his or her field of investigation.

Agency theory studies are always inductive.

Which of the following statements is not true regarding critical accounting?

The decision-model approach to accounting research is normative.

Which of the following is not a characteristic of good inductive accounting theory research?

An argument against using students as subjects in behavioral research experiments is that they are not representative of the broad population of accounting information users.

When the premises of a theory are constructed so that they can be tested by statistical inference, they are usually called: