Historical Cost vs. Fair Value to Measure Accounting Income? Some Comparative Arguments Provided by Accounting Professionals

Coûts historiques vs. justes valeurs pour mesurer le résultat comptable ? Les arguments comparés des professionnels du chiffre

Sophie Giordano-Spring (), Isabelle Martinez and Olivier Vidal ()
Additional contact information
Sophie Giordano-Spring: MRM - Montpellier Research in Management - UPVM - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - UPVD - Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - Groupe Sup de Co Montpellier (GSCM) - Montpellier Business School - UM - Université de Montpellier
Isabelle Martinez: UT3 - Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier - UT - Université de Toulouse
Olivier Vidal: LIRSA - Laboratoire interdisciplinaire de recherche en sciences de l'action - CNAM - Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers [CNAM]

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: In its 2011 call for projects, the French accounting standard setters evoked the need to rehabilitate the income statement by excluding unrealized gains (the income statement approach), thus taking the opposite view from the concept developed by the IASB (the balance sheet approach). The objective of the paper is to respond to this call by making an attempt to understand the reasons provided by professional accountants to include or exclude unrealized gains in the comprehensive income. What are the arguments in favor of a "monist" approach (based on historical cost) or those in favor of a "dualist" approach (based on fair value)? We conduct a qualitative study using 31 semistructured interviews and carrying out two content analyses – lexical and thematic. Results first show that there is no clear spilt between financial statement users and preparers in terms of language and concerns. Second, historical cost and fair value are not considered features of opposite accounting models, but rather complementary in today's business environment.

Keywords: orMative theories; fair value; historical cost; Conservatism; qualitative analysis; Théories normatives; Justes valeurs; Coûts historiques; Principe de prudence; Analyse qualitative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Comptabilité Contrôle Audit / Accounting Auditing Control, 2015, 21 (Tome 21), pp.119-148. ⟨10.3917/cca.213.0119⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02010717

DOI: 10.3917/cca.213.0119

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().