The purpose of this book is to offer a more systematic and structured treatment of the research on accounting based valuation, with a primary focus on recent theoretical developments and the resulting empirical analyses that recognize the role of accounting information in making managerial decisions. Since its inception, valuation research in accounting has evolved primarily along an empirically driven path. In the absence of models constructed specifically to explain this topic, researchers have relied on economic intuition and theories from other disciplines (mainly finance and economics) as a basis for designing empirical analyses and interpreting findings. Although this literature has shed important light on the usefulness of accounting information in capital markets, it is obvious that the lack of a rigorous theoretical framework has hindered the establishment of a systematic and well structured literature and made it difficult to probe valuation issues in depth. More recently, however, progress has been made on the theoretical front.
