Conservatism research: Historical development and future prospects

Over the last decade, there has been much empirical research on Chinese accounting conservatism. This research started with Ball, Robin and Wu (2000) that was one of the first papers to apply modern research methods to Chinese data. In this paper, I survey the early research on conservatism to provide the background and context for a discussion of my dissertation paper, Basu (1997). I describe some lessons I have learnt from the unexpected success of my dissertation, review recent Chinese research on accounting conservatism and suggest a few directions for future (Chinese) conservatism research. Finally, I describe how my current research on the origins of accounting (including Chinese accounting) is related to my search for an ultimate explanation for conservative accounting.