Relation between Market Values and Contemporaneous Accounting Numbers

There is a broad interest in the relation between the market value of a firm’s common equity and the accounting numbers reported by the firm. For example, virtually every business school has a course in financial statement analysis for valuation purposes, and both investors and analysts consider the information in accounting reports when making investment decisions or recommendations. Furthermore, there are a large number of empirical studies in which accounting researchers examine this relation. We do not try to summarize or provide specific references to this literature, but we note that there is a significant subset of this research that seeks to understand how market values relate to contemporaneous accounting numbers.1 In some cases, the studies assume that, or explore whether, the accounting reports are a source of investor information, whereas in other studies the accounting numbers are merely viewed as representations of investor information.