Week 3: The Fair Value Accounting Model: Foundations of Management 2 (MG459)
Week 3: The Fair Value Accounting Model: Foundations of Management 2 (MG459)
Week 3:
The Fair Value Accounting Model
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Foundations of Management 2: Sessions
Week 1: Making Business Decisions that Commit Capital
Reporting
Week 2: Representing a Firm’s Financial Condition: 1 To users of
Accounts
Week 3: Representing a Firm’s Financial Condition: 2
7) Summary
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Introduction: Measurement of Assets
Assets may be measured in the financial statements at historical cost or at fair value,
as well as at valuation approaches constituting a mix between these two alternatives.
“Historical cost: In historical cost accounting, assets have initially been measured at
their cost on the date they were acquired… In the historical cost system, the accounting
treatment after the date of acquisition depends on the nature of the asset…
• Non-current assets … are valued at historical cost less depreciation. Depreciation
is a measure of the use of the asset over its life.
• Current assets, such as inventories, accounts receivable and cash, usually remain
recorded at historical cost until they are used in the operations of the business or
are sold.
Fair value: Fair value is the price that would be received to sell an asset in an orderly
transaction between market participants at the measurement date.
• Non-current assets … are held for use in the business and so their fair value
cannot be measured directly through selling them. Instead the reporting entity
must estimate the fair value of an asset of similar type and condition.
• Current assets are used or sold within the reporting period. Their value in a
market can usually be reported relatively easily.” Weetman (2019:39)
The standard defines ‘fair value’ as follows: ‘Fair value is defined as the
price that would be received to sell an asset or paid to transfer a liability in
an orderly transaction between market participants at the measurement date
(an exit price).’
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The Fair Value Hierarchy
The different levels relate to the different inputs that go into the measurement
of fair value.
Level 2 relates to inputs other than quoted prices included within Level 1
that are observable for the asset or liability, either directly or indirectly.
For example, prices for similar assets in active or inactive markets, or inputs
other than quoted prices, such as interest rates.
- Currently, financial statements combine historical cost and fair value for
accounting for different items, reducing consistency.
- There are many instances in which asset and liability values already
incorporate a view of the future.
- Recall: assets and liabilities are partly defined in terms of future cash flows.
- For example: loans receivable is determined by a bank by forecasting
defaults and assigning a present value to the balance.
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Task: You might wish to review the following
further reading:
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How do we measure ‘Fair Value’?
- Under idealized conditions three measures of fair value are identical.
- 1) ‘Entry price’ reflects acquisition price.
- 2) ‘Exit price’ reflects sales price.
- 3) ‘Value in use’ reflects the incremental firm value attributable to an asset
and is calculated by assigning a present value to future cash flows.
- The trend for the last few decades has been towards increasing
promulgation of fair value accounting standards:
- Accounting for the cost of pension provision,
- Accounting for business combinations
- Accounting for financial instruments.
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Adverse Selection
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Akerlof (1970) on Adverse Selection
• Akerlof (1970) uses the market for used cars as an example of
a market characterized by adverse selection.
• Assume that cars are traded in two markets: new and used cars.
• The cars that are traded in these markets may be high quality or
low quality. Low quality cars are called ‘lemons’.
• Assume that a buyer has purchased a high quality new car and
wishes to sell shortly after having purchased it.
• What price can the seller expect to receive?
• P = q x P (high quality car) + (1-q) x P (low quality car)
• The price received by the seller of a high quality used car is both less
than the value of a high quality used car…
• Because information asymmetry entails that the market price paid by buyers for
the average value of cars that are both high quality and low quality.
• … and lower than the true value of a new car, where any buyer takes
into account that the new car may be high or low quality.
• Because this is a used car now and buyers assign a higher probability to it being
a low quality car than they did when the car was sold as new.
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Implications of and Solutions to Adverse Selection
• Adverse selection entails that owners of high quality cars are
“locked in”.
• Owners of high quality used cars cannot sell them for their true value.
• Consequently, the proportion of low quality, used cars in the market will
increase … and the proportion of high quality, used cars will decline.
• Ultimately, the consequence of adverse selection is that the market will
cease to exist or simply not function as well as it might.
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Adverse Selection and
Financial Accounting Theory
• Adverse Selection ‘is a type of information asymmetry whereby one or
more parties to a business transaction, or potential transaction, have an
information advantage over other parties.’ (Scott & O’Brien 2020:23)
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Reassessing the Value Relevance
Argument for the Historical Cost
Accounting Model
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The Value Relevance Perspective Re-Assessed
• The value relevance perspective suggests that there is a trade-off between
relevance and faithful representation of accounting reports.
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Behavioural and Psychological
Perspectives on Investor Rationality
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The Economic and Behavioural
Perspectives Compared
The economic perspective assumes that the actors making decisions are
rational and able to make computations without any constraint. The economic
perspective highlights how decisions might be made under conditions of full
rationality.
Decision makers are boundedly rational in that they are intended rational, but
limited so. Decision makers have limited ability to process information. People
also seek to simplify decision making. Decisions are made using short cuts, or
heuristics, rather than by working out the consequences of the action in full.
People are not necessarily aware of their objectives, which are also subject to
change.
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Simon (1947) “The Equilibrium of the Corporation”
There are three actors in the firm: the entrepreneur, the customer and the
employee.
Each actor has inducements to participate in the firm and makes contributions
to the firm.
Inducement Contribution
Entrepreneur Revenue Cost of product
Employee Wages Labour
Customer Product Purchase price
Entrepreneur Customer
Worker
See Chapter 6 of Simon, H. (1947) ‘Administrative Behaviour’.
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Bounded Rationality
Each actor will remain in the firm as long as the satisfaction derived
from the net balance of inducements over contributions exceeds the
satisfaction from withdrawing.
The focus is not on maximizing the value of the firm, but on the
practices that enable firms to attain a robust existence over time.
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Behavioural studies
Behavioural studies on the psychology of the decision making of
investors argue that average investor behaviour differs from models of
rational decision making (see Scott & O’Brien 2020:192-200).
The critique is not only about uncertainty in the use of information or the
changing preferences of decision makers, but that “…the preferences assumed
in decision theory differ in important ways from the preferences of human
decision makers” (March 1987:156)
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The Valuation Perspective
• Under the assumption that investors are rational, accounting
statements can rely on historical cost.
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Efficient Contracting and the Critique of
the Fair Value Model
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Recap: Efficient Contracting Theory
• Efficient contracting theory takes the view that firms organize themselves
to maximize their prospects for survival (Scott & O’Brien 2020:312-313).
• An efficient contract is a contract that accomplishes its objectives at the lowest cost to
the firm and its stakeholders.
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Contracts and Accounting Terminology
• Contracts by their nature are “rigid”; that is, hard to change.
• Over the duration of a long term and rigid contract, accounting
standards will probably change during the life of the contract.
• If the contract refers to accounting terms, accounting standard
changes has implications for the contract.
• There are several alternative solutions to this:
• First, renegotiate the contract on each occasion that the relevant
accounting standards change. But this would be costly.
• Second, include provisions in the initial contract that specify what to do in
the case of accounting change. But accounting changes cannot be
predicted. One cannot specify all the changes in advance. The contract is
“incomplete”.
• Third, retain the accounting standards and terms that were initially used in
the contract. However, this incurs the cost of keeping track of the all the
changes in standards on the contract.
• Fourth, allow the manager some flexibility over accounting standard choice,
so that when standards change, the manager uses discretion to select
between policies so as to retain the original objective of the contract.
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Task: Please review the following
essential reading:
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Tradeoff Relating to the Quality of Standards
• Giving managers the discretion to select from a set of accounting policies
opens up the possibility of opportunistic behaviour. That is, for
managers to select standards that serve their own objectives rather than
those of shareholders.
• If the manager can exercise discretion over accounting choice, then the
manager may change accounting policies so as to increase reported net
income and retain the operating policy that the manager believes is
consistent with the existing strategy of the firm.
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Did Fair Value Accounting Contribute to
the Financial Crisis?
• Laux & Leux (2010) consider a series of issues in examining this question.
• To what extent did the fair value standard require the different types of
banks to account for assets at their current values (mark to market price)
rather than to an estimate of the market price (mark to model).
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Summary
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Summary
• In this lecture we introduced two arguments supporting the fair value accounting
model.
• First, we analysed how adverse selection supports the fair value accounting model.
• Second, we introduced the valuation perspective as supporting the fair value model.
– We critiqued the value relevance perspective, supporting the historical cost model, introduced last
week.
– We analysed anomalies relating to securities markets and noted that behavioural approaches to
accounting explain these anomalies. We noted the support of behavioural arguments for the fair value
model.
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Appendix 1:
Introduction to the
Land Securities case
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Example: Accounting for Investment Property
Consider three companies investing in real estate for the purpose of earning
rental income and making capital gains on their real estate investment: US
Realty, UK Real Estate and International Property.
How would the financial reports of the three companies look given the following:
1) Acquisition of property for $1,000 on 31/12/2009
2) The value of the property is $1,300 on 31/12/2010
3) The value of the property is $1,100 on 31/12/2011
4) The value of the property is $500 on 31/12/2012
We assume the land has negligible value and the building depreciates to zero
over ten years.
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US Realty - Historical Cost Model
Accounting Entries:
Cumulative
Cash Building Depreciation Impairment Dep + Impair
2009 -1,000 1,000
2010 -100 -100
2011 -100 -200
2012 -100 -300
-200 -500
2) Can Land Securities assess the impact of adopting the fair value model
on previous year’s key performance metrics, such as ‘profit on ordinary
activities’?
3) Which model: historical cost, fair value or revaluation reserve, would you
recommend for Land Securities to adopt? Why?
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Appendix 2: Measures of Income
Reminder:
Defining Income and Revenue,
Income Statement,
Statement of Comprehensive Income,
Statement of Changes in Equity
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Defining Income, Revenue, Expense and Profit
Income is defined as “increases in assets or decreases in liabilities, that
result in increases in equity (ownership interest), other than those relating
to contributions from holders of equity claims.”
Discontinued operations
= Loss for the period from discontinued operations
Profit for the period attributable to equity holders
Earnings per share
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Statement of Comprehensive Income
• The income statement (profit and loss account) reports the
revenues and expenses that arise from a firm’s operations.
• The change in the value of an asset or liability whilst it is held by
the company gives more cause for debate.
• In particular:
– Realized gains and losses are generally included in profit.
– Unrealized gains and losses are generally excluded from profit.
• “The IASB wants to encourage companies to report all changes
in assets and liabilities whatever the cause, in a Statement of
Comprehensive Income” (Weetman 2019:343)
• Consequently, the IASB allows a two-part approach:
– A separate Income Statement
– A second statement beginning with profit and loss from the Income
Statement and incorporating other components of comprehensive income.
• Revaluation of non-current assets: Please see the Land Securities case
• Changes in the exchange rates of foreign currency.
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Statement of Changes in Equity
• Explains all changes in equity (ownership interest):
• The IASB distinguishes between “owner” changes
in equity and “non-owner” changes in equity.
• “Non-owner changes in equity”
– Profit or loss reported in the income statement and / or
statement of comprehensive income.
• “Owner changes in equity”
– Payment of dividends
– Issuance of equity capital.
• Impact for both non-owner changes in equity and
owner changes in equity of retrospective application
or restatement in disclosure.
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