IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/tijaxx/v54y2019i02ns1094406019500070.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Accounting Research on Private Firms: State of the Art and Future Directions

Author

Listed:
  • Sasson Bar-Yosef

    (School of Business Administration, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel)

  • Carlo D’Augusta

    (Middle Tennessee State University, USA)

  • Annalisa Prencipe

    (Bocconi University, Italy)

Abstract

Private companies play a significant role and are the main growth engine of the global economy. Yet, until recently, empirical research in accounting has focused primarily on public companies. Over the last few years, we have observed a change in trend. Accounting scholars have started researching private firms and have contributed to a better understanding of their accounting decisions. This growing attention is likely due to a better availability of public data and to the fact that several regulators issued specific regulations on private firms’ financial reporting. In this paper, we analyze the state of the art of accounting research in this area. We review 95 papers published in 21 accounting journals over the period 1986–2018. After looking into the definition of private firms, we highlight the role of the private firm status in the research design, classify each paper into four main research areas (i.e., financial accounting, taxation, auditing, and valuation) and discuss the main contributions. We argue that the current state of accounting research on private firms — although quite rich — is still insufficient in light of the relevance of such a segment of the world economy. After soliciting additional research, we devise possible venues for future studies.

Suggested Citation

  • Sasson Bar-Yosef & Carlo D’Augusta & Annalisa Prencipe, 2019. "Accounting Research on Private Firms: State of the Art and Future Directions," The International Journal of Accounting (TIJA), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 54(02), pages 1-75, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:wsi:tijaxx:v:54:y:2019:i:02:n:s1094406019500070
    DOI: 10.1142/S1094406019500070
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S1094406019500070
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S1094406019500070?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maarten Corten & Tensie Steijvers & Nadine Lybaert & Céline Coeckelbergs, 2021. "The Influence of the CEO on Auditor Choice in Private Firms: An Interplay of Willingness and Ability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-19, June.
    2. Flauzeliton José Aparecido Gonçalves & André Aroldo Freitas De Moura & Fabio Yoshio Suguri Motoki, 2022. "What influences the implementation of IFRS for SMEs? The Brazilian case," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(2), pages 2947-2992, June.
    3. Kettunen, Jukka & Martikainen, Minna & Voulgaris, Georgios, 2021. "Employment policies in private loss firms: Return to profitability and the role of family CEOs," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 373-390.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:tijaxx:v:54:y:2019:i:02:n:s1094406019500070. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/tija .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.