Effective experimental controls for research in international accounting: Further thoughts

This paper responds to recent research by Ruland et al. [Ruland, W., Shon, J., Zhou, P., 2007. Effective controls for research in international accounting. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 26(1), 96–116.] that addresses the effectiveness of experimental controls for research in international accounting, with focus on Ndubizu and Sanchez [Ndubizu, G.A., Sanchez, M.H., 2006. The valuation properties of earnings and book value prepared under US GAAP in Chile and IAS in Peru. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy 25 (2)]. We attempt to remove some misconceptions about effective experimental controls that have surfaced in the debate. We argue that theory and refined proxies alleviate many of the control issues that have surfaced in the literature.