Economic development and advancements in information technology contributed to the shift on accounting objective from commission responsibility view to decision-making useful view. The decision-making useful view claims that the accounting measurement methods should be changed to improve the usefulness of accounting information, to enable information users to make correct decisions. In addition...

We examine whether and why companies prefer fair value to historical cost when they can choose between the two valuation methods. With the exception of investment property owned by real estate companies, historical cost by far dominates fair value in practice. Indeed, fair value accounting is not used for plant, equipment, and intangible assets. We find that companies using fair value accountin...

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 ...

In his paper, Professor Landsman reviews research on both the relevance and reliability of reporting fair values for loans and other financial instruments (Landsman (2005)). Accounting standard setters define fair value as the amount that would be paid or received for the item being valued in an arm’s length transaction between knowledgeable parties. This is a market value definition and the st...