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Recognition, measurement and disclosure of public sector assets constitute relevant matters for national and international public sector accounting standard-setting. This chapter develops a theoretical analysis drawing upon a dualistic approach contrasting current value and historical cost accounting models. Accordingly, the latter should be adapted and then preferred to cope with public sector specificities, with a view to providing information for and enforcing accountability to citizens and their political representatives. Drawing upon this theoretical setting, our analysis develops a consistent design for the overarching conceptual framework for assets in general, providing illustrative examples for specific categories such as financial, heritage, natural and military assets.

This paper aims to examine whether traditional accounting information has lost its relevance in the context of sub-Sahara Africa. Specifically, the study examines whether historical cost and inflation-adjusted data are related to the market value of equity and stock returns on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE).

The authors collect firm-specific data from annual reports of 20 listed firms from the GSE over the period 2007-2012. The authors use ordinary least squares and two stage least square (2SLS) to examine the value relevance of historical and inflation-adjusted income and equity.

The results suggest that the market equity is related to both historical-cost and inflation-adjusted earnings. Market return is also associated with both historical-cost and inflation-adjusted earnings and book value. Overall, the authors conclude that inflation-adjusted information content is more value relevant than the traditional cost accounting information.

The findings are a wake-up call to policymakers and practitioners in formulating financial reporting policies. This study, however, focuses on only non-financial listed firms on the GSE. Thus, the results may not be valid for all companies in Ghana.

The finding has an implication on the choice of valuation used in the preparation and reporting of financial statements. Accordingly, the authors offer policy directions to financial reporting regulatory authorities to enhance the value relevance of accounting information.

Regulators, especially the GSE may improve life of investors if the recommendations are transformed into directives that will help enhance the quality of financial reporting.

The findings suggest that inflation-adjusted data are more relevant in countries with extreme inflationary trend and lax International Financial Reporting Standards compliance enforcement. The results also lend support for the current cost accounting theory.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and depict the advantages and disadvantages connected to the fair value, providing the reader with objective information and thorough insight into the problems and benefits of fair value. Partial objectives of this paper are to define the concept of fair value, to provide information about theoretical background and evolution of fair value and to examine and describe the possible future development of fair value.

Findings in the paper are based on study of existing literature and also on study using the open-ended approach of grounded theory, including 50 interviews and two group discussions with professional accountants dealing with the fair value accounting in practice.

According to the advantages and disadvantages of the concept of fair value in accounting, it is quite obvious and clear that this concept is far from being perfect. It is very difficult to determine whether its contribution to the improvement of accounting is really beneficial. Although the fair-value discussion seems to be far from over now, the current crisis provided an interesting setting to further explore these issues, understand them better and hopefully urge responsible institutions to fix the imperfections within the system to make it work correctly and more effectively.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

This paper highlights that historical cost and fair value accounting must not be considered as competitors, as they serve different purposes. Knowledge of fair value is important, although it is not enough. Users also need to know the cost of the investment. In fact, knowing how much resources have been sacrificed to obtain that fair value, they could effectively evaluate stewardship. As a consequence, the adoption of a dual measurement and reporting system should be considered and discussed at a standard setting level.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how fair value accounting can be useful in the future.

This paper investigates distortions in financial statements that arise from employing capital assets. Use of historical cost depreciation tends to overstate earnings because of inflation effects, which in turn misrepresents firms' capacities to expand operations or to distribute dividends. We argue that the financial statement effects of inflation can be traced to two main sources: understated depreciation, and interest expense. Depending on a firm's capital structure choices, the distortion from historical cost depreciation is heightened or mitigated. Measurement errors in accounting numbers obscure the relation between price and earnings. We develop value relevant adjustments that enhance the informativeness of earnings. We also show that the effects of measurement errors from using historical cost depreciation are most pronounced in firms that carry lower levels of debt.

The purpose of this study is to identify how different Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) influence property management. The study is based on two basic accounting principles for the valuation of assets: fair value and historical cost. The study focuses on land and buildings as a main part of the total fixed assets of a company. It uses the framework of the Greek real estate market as an experimental setting where the principles of historic cost and fair value accounting can be compared.

The topic is approached using an integration of fixed assets into four main portfolio categories: own used; investments; held for sale assets; and inventories. According to this framework the study examines the accounting treatments under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), US GAAP and Greek GAAP for each portfolio transaction and analyses the impact of accounting entries to equity and profit and loss account.

The study results to a comparative analysis of the different studied GAAP and tries to establish a purchase price allocation method for property acquisition.

The contribution of this article is that it surveys principles, literature and practice about the above issues from a critical perspective, and presents a way to managing and monitoring real estate investments, using logical decision trees, from an accounting point of view.

This paper adopts a literary theory perspective to depict accounting reports and information as texts rather than as economic commodities and so available for analysis from the vantage point of semiotic linguistic theory. In doing so it takes the literary turn followed by many of the social sciences and humanities in recent decades. It compares and contrasts four dominant genres of literary theory – expressive realism, the new criticism, structuralism, and deconstructionism – to developments in accounting. The paper illustrates these and other ideas in the context of the controversies surrounding the oil and gas accounting crisis and practices circa 1961 to 1990. The paper concludes by outlining a new way of preparing accounting reports based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the heteroglossic novel. This approach calls for making accounting for an enterprise an ongoing conversation rather than a monologic process of closing down on a single meaning.

This paper aims to discuss fair value accounting and its usefulness to financial statement users. The European Commission has recently endorsed IFRS 13 on fair value measurement and is considering the endorsement of IFRS 9, which extends the use of fair value for financial instruments. Furthermore, fair value accounting has been under deep scrutiny because of its alleged role in the financial crisis. Therefore, the usefulness of fair value accounting is a key issue for standard setting purposes.

This paper delineates the theoretical background for fair value accounting, it provides empirical evidence on its usefulness, it highlights some controversial issues and makes some proposals for standard setting discussion.

Empirical research raises some doubts on fair value reliability. Furthermore, fair value accounting alone cannot provide information useful to evaluate stewardship. Historical cost is also needed. A dual measurement and financial reporting system could therefore deliver more complete and useful information to financial statement users.

This paper provides the reader with a comprehensive picture of the main issues related to fair value accounting and contributes to the standard setting debate on the optimal measurement system.

This paper reframes the debate on historical versus fair value accounting by explaining the reason why a dual measurement and reporting model should be implemented.

The purpose of this study is to provide a harmonisation framework for the diverse accounting practices by extractive industries.

The study takes a three-stage approach. The first involves a comprehensive literature review of the historical evolution of accounting regulations by extractive industries. The second involves constructing an accounting practice index for extractive industries. The third involves constructing a harmonisation framework.

The accounting practice index provides empirical evidence of the wide diversity of accounting practices by extractive industries. Analysis of the literature review addresses the several attempts by accounting and regulatory bodies to standardise the diverse practices of accounting by extractive industries and reasons for the lack of successful standardisations. The authors extract lessons from these previous attempts and propose a harmonisation framework.

The proposed harmonisation framework can be used to align together the diverse accounting practices by extractive industries and enhance comparability and consistency of accounting figures and statements produced by these industries. Harmonising the diverse accounting practices is crucial for investment decision-making.

The harmonisation framework is the first of its kind that could enhance the comparability of accounts of extractive industries’ firms and be used to harmonise diverse accounting practices by other industries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges faced by an Australian accounting academic, R. J. Chambers, in the 1950s, in breaking into the accounting research community, at that time, almost entirely located in the USA and the UK. For academics outside the networks of accounting research publication in these countries, there were significant, but not insurmountable obstacles to conducting and publishing accounting research. We examine how these obstacles could be overcome, using the notion of “trials of strength” to trace the efforts of Chambers in wrestling with intellectual issues arising from post-war inflation, acquiring accounting literature from abroad and publishing his endeavours.

The article uses actor-network theory to provide an analytical structure for a “counter-narrative” history firmly grounded in the archives.

Documents from the R. J. Chambers Archive at the University of Sydney form the empirical basis for a narrative that portrays accounting research as a diverse process driven as much by circumstances – such as geographical location, access to accounting literature and personal connections – as the merits of the intellectual arguments.

Although the historical details are specific to the case being studied, the article provides insights into the challenges faced by researchers on the outside of international research networks in achieving recognition and in participating in academic debates.

The findings of this article can provide guidance and inspiration to accounting researchers attempting to participate in wider academic communities.

The article uses documents from perhaps the most extensive archive relating to an individual accounting academic. It examines the process of academic research in accounting in terms of the material context in which such research takes place, whereas most discussions have focussed on the underlying ideas and concepts, abstracted from the context in which they emerge.