The Sustainability of Success: Distinguishing the Lucky from the Good in the Stacked Deck of Academic Accounting

Almost all accounting doctoral graduates strive to publish their dissertations in one of the top three journals in the academic accounting discipline. This study first replicates and extends prior work to show that students that earn their degrees from more prestigious programs and those that take faculty positions at more prestigious schools are more likely to succeed in this endeavor. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates that working with individuals that have been successful publishing in the top three journals provides the advantage of sustained research productivity in these mainstream journals. Implications for academic careers and employment are drawn.