This paper reviews the empirical methods used in the accounting literature to draw causal inferences. Recent years have seen a burgeoning growth in the use of methods that seek to exploit as-if random variation in observational settings—i.e., “quasi-experiments.” We provide a synthesis of the major assumptions of these methods, discuss several practical considerations relevant to the application of these methods in the accounting literature, and provide a framework for thinking about whether and when quasi-experimental and non-experimental methods are well-suited for addressing causal questions of interest to accounting researchers. While there is growing interest in addressing causal questions within the literature, we caution against the idea that one should restrict attention to only those causal questions for which there are quasi-experiments. We offer a complementary approach for addressing causal questions that does not rely on the availability of a quasi-experiment, but rather relies on a combination of economic theory, developing and falsifying alternative explanations, triangulating results across multiple settings, measures, and research designs, and caveating results where appropriate.

本文回顾了会计文献中用于得出因果推论的实证方法。近年来，寻求利用观察环境中看似随机变化的方法（即“准实验”）的使用迅速增长。我们提供了这些方法的主要假设的综合，讨论了与这些方法在会计文献中的应用相关的几个实际考虑，并提供了一个框架来思考准实验和非实验方法是否以及何时适合用于解决会计研究人员感兴趣的因果关系问题。尽管人们对解决文献中的因果问题越来越感兴趣，但我们告诫人们不要将注意力仅限于那些有准实验的因果问题。