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Including estimates of the future in today's financial statements

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  • Mary Barth

    (Stanford Graduate School of Business)

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    Abstract

    This paper explains why the question is how, not if, today's financial statements should include estimates of the future. Including such estimates is not new, but their use is increasing. This increase results primarily because standard setters believe asset and liability measures that reflect current economic conditions and up-to-date expectations of the future will result in more useful information for making economic decisions, which is the objective of financial reporting. This is why standard setters seem focused on fair value accounting. How estimates of the future are incorporated in financial statements depends on the asset and liability measurement attribute, and on financial reporting definitions of assets and liabilities. The present definitions depend on identifying past transactions or events that give rise to expected inflows or outflows of economic benefits and, for inflows, control over the expected benefits. Thus, not all expected inflows or outflows of economic benefits are recognised. Note disclosures can help users understand recognised estimates, and can provide information about unrecognised estimates. Including more estimates of the future in today's financial statements would result in an income measure that differs from today's income, but arguably provides better information for making economic decisions.

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    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by Bank for International Settlements in its series BIS Working Papers with number 208.

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    Length: 27 pages
    Date of creation: Aug 2006
    Date of revision:
    Handle: RePEc:bis:biswps:208

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    Related research

    Keywords: financial statements; fair value; financial reporting;

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    Cited by:
    1. Jannis Bischof & Ulf Brüggemann & Holger Daske, 2012. "Fair Value Reclassifications of Financial Assets during the Financial Crisis," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2012-010, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
    2. Mary Barth & Wayne Landsman, 2010. "How did Financial Reporting Contribute to the Financial Crisis?," European Accounting Review, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 19(3), pages 399-423.

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