As you may be aware, the subject of fair value accounting has been discussed in the United States for well over a decade. Advocates of fair value accounting believe that fair value is the most relevant measure for financial reporting. Others, however, believe that historical cost provides a more useful measure because it more clearly represents the economics of business performance and because ...

If you were asked to select those businessrelated professions, which, in your judgment, were most inclined toward continuous change, what would your answer be? Perhaps your selection would include the legal profession, industrial engineering, finance, or even electronic data processing. It is most unlikely that your selection would include the fields of accounting and economics. Each of these l...

We combine input-output and bilateral trade data to quantify cross-border production linkages. Using a complete trading system, we compute bilateral trade in value added for 87 countries and regions. The ratio of value added to gross exports is a measure of the intensity of production sharing. Across sectors, manufacturing has a relatively low ratio and thus accounts for a smaller share of expo...

The aim of this paper is to examine the pros and cons of book and fair value accounting from the perspective of the theory of banking. We consider the implications of the two accounting methods in an overlapping generations environment. As observed by Allen and Gale(1997), in an overlapping generation model, banks have a role as intergenerational connectors as they allow for intertemporal smoot...

In Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects, value for money (VFM) tests and accounting treatment are distinct but related issues. VFM analysis should be concerned with total risk, not just with the sharing of risk, which dominates the accounting treatment decision. A framework is developed for logical thinking about what is meant by `̀ best VFM’’ in the context of PFI projects. This involves c...

In this paper, we analyze the social value of accounting objectivity in maintaining bank stability. Building on an early, in‡uential accounting work by Ijiri and Jaedicke (1966), we operationalize two informational properties, objectivity and accuracy, in a correlated information structure and embedded them into a model of bank runs. We show that, when compared with the accuracy property, the o...

This paper proposes a generational accounting approach to valuating research. Based on the flow of scientific results, a value-added (VA) index is developed that can, in principle, be used to assign a monetary value to any research result and, by aggregation, on entire academic disciplines or sub-disciplines. The VA-index distributes the value of all applications that embody research to the wor...