We review the academic literature on the use of financial reporting information by capital providers. We classify our findings by investor type and by information objective. While most capital providers use accounting information, our survey indicates that they do so in a variety of ways with...

This study discusses the challenges and opportunities of establishing causal inference in empirical archival financial accounting research. Causal inference requires identification of a theoretically predicted causal mechanism in a research setting optimized to avoid endogenous causes and using...

This paper analyzes the role of financial accounting and reporting in the current financial crisis. Starting outlining the objectives of financial accounting and giving a brief overview over the relevant accounting standards for financial instruments, it highlights the potentially pro-cyclical...

In their joint framework project, the FASB and the IASB recently proposed dropping stewardship as a separate objective of financial accounting, because the Boards view stewardship and valuation usefulness as compatible sub-objectives ranking under an overall objective of decision usefulness....

The mandatory adoption of IFRS by many countries worldwide fuels the expectation that financial accounting information might become more comparable across countries. This expectation is opposed to an alternative view that stresses the importance of incentives in shaping accounting information....

Prior research documents that conditional conservatism, measured as the asymmetric timeliness of earnings reflecting bad vs. good news, varies with cross-country differences in institutional regimes. In this paper, we examine the determinants of conditional conservatism and related earnings...

The adoption of IFRS by many countries worldwide fuels the expectation that financial accounting might become more comparable across countries. This expectation is opposed to an alternative view that stresses the importance of incentives in shaping accounting information. We provide early...

In their current framework project, the IASB and the FASB identify decision usefulness as the objective of financial reporting. Unfortunately, accounting research has neither yet come up with an undisputed measure of decision usefulness, nor with a satisfying method to rank competing measurement...