We connect conservative accounting to the cost of capital by developing an accounting model within an asset pricing framework. The model has three distinctive features: (1) transaction-cycle-conformity, where the book value equals the value of cash at the beginning and the end of a cash-to-cash...

We connect conservative accounting to the cost of capital by developing an accounting model within an asset pricing framework. The model has three distinctive features: (1) transaction-cycle-conformity, where the book value of an investment equals the value of cash at the beginning and the end...

The FASB and the IASB recently issued a joint discussion paper entitled, Preliminary Views on Revenue Recognition in Contracts with Customers. The Boards requested comments on whether their proposed model for revenue recognition would improve the usefulness of the financial statement information...

Standard setters have sought a conceptual framework to guide development of a consistent set of accounting standards. However, the framework has two key weaknesses. First, it is very broad, lacks a measurement framework, and can be used ex post to justify a wide range of actual accounting...

Standard setters and most academics maintain that accounting standards ought to rest on a set of guiding principles stated explicitly in a “conceptual framework.” The FASB and IASB are currently involved in a project to refine conceptual framework documents developed earlier. At this point,...

Standard formulas for valuing the equity of going concerns require prediction of payoffs "to infinity" but practical analysis requires that they be predicted over finite horizons. This truncation inevitably involves (often troublesome) "terminal value" calculations. This paper contrasts dividend...

During the recent stock market bubble, the traditional financial reporting model was assailed as a backward looking system, out of date in the Information Age. With the bursting of the bubble, the quality of financial reporting is again under scrutiny, but now for not adhering to traditional...

A claim is commonly made that cash and accrual accounting methods for valuing equities must always yield equivalent valuations. A recent paper by Lundholm and O'Keefe (Contemporary Accounting Research, Summer, 2001), for example, claims that, because of this equivalence, there is nothing to be...

During the recent stock market bubble, the traditional financial reporting model was assailed as a backward looking system, out of date in the Information Age. With the bursting of the bubble, the quality of financial reporting is again under scrutiny, but now for not adhering to traditional...

Research has concluded that there has been a decline in the informativeness of earnings over recent years. The reported decline has been attributed to an increasing mismatch of expenses to revenues from the increasing expensing of investment to the income statement. This paper challenges this...