Fair Value Accounting: The Eternal Debate – AinE EAA Symposium, May 2018

Abstract

The last financial crisis led to a vigorous debate still in place about the pros and cons of fair-value accounting (FVA). While detractors basically argue its potential negative impact on procicality and financial stability or inadequacy in illiquid markets or specific business models, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) pushed to extend FVA in the new financial instruments standard and issued IFRS 13 to clarify its meaning and application. Some empirical research shows the usefulness of fair value accounting information to investors and contradicts its negative impact on stability, while other studies argue about its limitations in the contracting and stewardship role of accounting. The panelists of this symposium will present their views to contribute to the debate, which should be of interest not just to academic researchers, but also to practitioners and standard setters to deal with implementation issues and potential needs to address in the standards.

Keywords:

• fair value accounting
• IFRS 13
• own credit risk
• analysts and fair value

Notes

1 FVA already was controversial before the crisis, as showed in the carve-out in IAS 39 in the IFRS endorsement process in EU (Van Mourik & Walton, 2018).

2 The changes in the loan losses impairment models are widely analysed in Giner and Mora (2019).

3 IASB staff. The views expressed in this presentation are those of the presenter, not necessarily those of the International Accounting Standards Board (the Board) or IFRS Foundation.