Discussion of Lev, Radhakrishnan and Zhang

It has been suggested that accountants do not resolve issues—that ‘we abandon them. We debate them loud and long . . . until another issue comes along that is more current and more controversial’ (Sterling, 1975). However, it is also clear that some issues are not entirely abandoned—they are recycled. Those issues are the subject of (seemingly) scholarly articles. They are debated with vigour, but then put to one side—only to re-emerge a generation or two later. For example, discussions about the choice of the ‘correct’ or ‘proper’ depreciation method occupied many pages of technical journals in the 1950s and 1960s (see, e.g., Reynolds, 1961)—and have been periodically revisited ever since (e.g., Burns, 1992; Howe, 2008)....