The rise and Significance of Modern Analytical Methods in Accounting. Part II.

Abstract

This is Part II of some review essays dealing with the development of analytical accounting, and partic - ularly, the application of information economics to accounting [for Part I, see Mattessich 2003a]. The current essay discusses the Economics of Accounting; Volume I: Information in Markets by Peter O. Christensen and Gerald A. Feltham [2003]. Although this book deals with the same subject matter as the one discussed in Part I [i.e., Christensen and Demski, 2003], the “new” work is not only more comprehensive but offers a better overall survey of information economics as applied to accounting. Thus it may also serve as an excellent and rigorous reference work, offering a large number of mathematical theorems and their proofs. On the other side, it has hardly any intuitive illustrations and is less pedagogically oriented than the book discussed in Mattessich [2003a]. The first volume (here discussed) deals with the basic decision-facilitating role of information and, above all, with public information and private investor information as well as the disclosure of private information (by owners), all in equity markets (in contrast to the second and forthcoming volume that has a more internal orientation, dealing with Performance Evaluation and Agency Theory).