The Study On The Value-relevance Of The Fair Value Based On The New Accounting Standards

The concept of historical cost, which is based on the fiduciary responsibilities and emphasizes "reliability" of accounting information, has been the main mode of measurement for a long time. However, along with the economic development, corporate interest has become more and more decentralized and the relationship between the trust and the trustee has been gradually watered down. A large number of dispersed shareholders are no longer concerned about the assets represented by the shares they are holding and pay more attention to the returns or profits brought by their shares of stock. Thus the Decision Usefulness comes into being a useful concept. The main intention of the Decision Usefulness is to deliver the information which is useful of helping investors and creditors to make decisions, that is the"usefulness"of the accounting information. All this must objectively require accounting to reform its measurement system and introduce the fair value measurement model. At the same time, with the development of the financial industry, particularly with the constantly emerging of the derivatives, the superiority of the fair value measurement model becomes more and more obvious. Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued "Notice Financial Accounting Standards No. 133 - derivatives and hedging activities of the accounting treatment", in which FASB indicated clearly that: fair value measurement is the best metric attributes of financial instruments, especially on the part of the derivatives, fair Value is the only relative metric attribute.Because the international study on the fair value has an early start, now the issue has not been to compare the fair value with historical cost, but to explore ways to improve the fair value. China started to study the fair value vary late, just from the 1990s. The fair value was put into the use of the debt restructuring and non-monetary transactions criteria for the first attempt in 1998. But at that time our institutional was in harness and the technical instruments was lack too, besides the supervisory mechanism was not mature. So in those days the enterprises used randomly these accounting criteria, and there has been phenomenon that the enterprises use the fair value to manipulate the profits. So, in 2001 the use of the fair value had been stopped. But the research of the fair value was not given up. The Ministry of Finance in February 2006 issued a new accounting standards system, the system of new accounting standards had a large change and adjustment compared with the prior one. The formulation and implementation of the new accounting standards accommodated the needs of the development of our Market economy. At the same time, the fair value measurement model which was introduced as a very important aspect in the new accounting standards reflected the trend of the converging state of the standards of our country with the international standards. The main problem discussed in this paper is that with the release of the new accounting standards, whether the capital market has made a positive response; as well as with the introduction of the fair value, whether the value-relevance of the accounting information has increased.We mainly have six parts in this paper, which is divided as follows:The first part of the paper is the introduction, which illustrates briefly the background and the significance of this paper, and introduces the method of the research and the structure of the article.The second part is the literature review. First, we look back the previous accounting system reforms in China. We quoted the research on the value-relevance based on the accounting standards reform at home and abroad. We found that the institution and implementation of the accounting standards, have a significant impact on the relativity of the accounting information, but the degree is diverse cross the countries. Second, we introduce of the process of introduction of the fair value, and analyze the reasons at the same time. Through the collation of the documents both here and abroad, we found that although there was controversy, the authorization of the value-relevance of the fair value was still the mainstream. The third part is the academic analysis. Elaborating on the theories of the value-relevance and the theory of the decision usefulness, we brought forward two hypotheses, which was showed as follow: Hypothesis1: The implementation of the new accounting standards improved the interpretation level of the accounting information and enhanced the value-relevance of the accounting statements; Hypothesis2: The adoption of the fair value enhanced the value-relevance of Chinese accounting statements.Part IV is the sample selection and the model design. We selected companies which only issued A shares and were listed in Shenzhen and Shanghai stock market from 2006 to 2007 as sample. After a series of omissions, we reached the final 1,242 sample companies which were eligible. In this paper, we adopted the prices model and return model which were used widely in the same area internationally to test the hypotheses.Part V is the empirical analysis. Through the descriptive statistics, the regression analysis and the correlation analysis, we draw the conclusions as follows: First, the new accounting standards implemented in China improved the ability of the interpretation the accounting information and enhanced the value-relevance of the accounting statements. And the paper also proved that the investors paid more attention to the net income than the net asset per share. Second, the use of the fair value as the measurement attributes can provide users of financial statements with incremental value-relevance information. And through the robust test, we studied the impact of the introduction of the fair value on different industries. We also found that not all industries which introduced the fair value have had a positive response, only "the financial industry" and "the information technology industry" adopted a significant test. All this shows that the introduction of the scope and the methods of the fair value needs further expand.Part VI is the conclusion of this paper. Based on the results of empirical analysis and arrangement, this paper presents some policies and recommendations as follows:First, the government should make good use of the security market actively, besides the efficiency and the level of the regulation should be improved too.Second, the government and other every aspect should take actions to make sure the implementation of the high quality criteria effectively.Third, the government should improve the external markets for the application of the fair value and strengthen the supervision of a third party and expand the use of the fair value.Finally, the government should improve the level of the investors'knowledge and consciousness of the law.