2 资本市场会计研究的需求

primarily with a pedagogical motivation.It contains an overview of the state of accounting research in the era prior to the Ball and Brown(1968)and Beaver (1968)and the developments infinance and economics in the mid-1960s that facilitated capital markets research in accounting.I discuss much of the capital markets research in the past two decades in Section4.Section4is split into four subsections.Section4.1examines methodological research.Section4.2 focuses on research evaluating alternative performance measures.Funda-mental analysis research in accounting is the topic of Section4.3and tests of market efficiency in accounting are critically evaluated in Section4.4.Capital markets research on standard setting is also a capital markets research topic, but I refer the reader to the Holthausen and Watts(2001)review.Section5 presents a summary and conclusions.

2.Demand for capital markets research in accounting

A large fraction of published research in leading academic accounting journals examines the relation betweenfinancial statement information and capital markets,referred to as capital markets research.This voluminous published research is an indication of the demand for capital markets research.1There are at least four sources of the demand for capital markets research in accounting that explain its popularity:(i)fundamental analysis and valuation;(ii)tests of capital market efficiency;(iii)role of accounting in contracts and in the political process;and(iv)disclosure regulation.I discuss the four sources of demand for capital markets research below,and list the types of research studies I subsequently summarize in the review.While I believe the four sources account for a large fraction of the demand for capital markets research in accounting,these sources are neither mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive.

2.1.Fundamental analysis and v aluation

Shareholders,investors,and lenders have an obvious interest in the value of afirm.In an efficient market,firm value is defined as the present value of expected future net cashflows,discounted at the appropriate risk-adjusted rate

1I do not examine the decline in the cost of doing capital market research as an explanation for the explosive growth in the supply of capital market research over the past three decades.The cost has declined with the low-cost availability of computing power,statistical packages,and machine-readable databases such as security price data from the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP),financial statement data from Standard&Poor’s Compustat,and analysts’forecast data from Institutional Brokers Estimate System(IBES).