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The Accounting Review Vol. 62 No. 4 1987

The Incremental Information Content of Historical Cost and Current Cost Income Numbers: Time-Series Analyses for 1962-1980

Victor L. Bernard; Robert G. Ruland

Abstract

[Previous investigations of the incremental information content of current cost income have focused on cross-sectional analyses, which assume that the relation between stock returns and specific price-level adjustments is the same for all firms. Beaver et al. [1982] suggest that such analyses may be misspecified and provide preliminary indications that the incremental information content of current cost income may be more evident in a time-series context. The study summarized here provides the first formal examination of the information content of current cost income and historical cost income within a time-series context. Some evidence of incremental information content in current cost income is found in the time-series analysis, even though none is evident in a cross-sectional analysis. However, incremental information content is (at best) evident only for a small subset of industries where the correlation between historical cost income and current cost income is low; for the majority of industries, the two income measures convey essentially the same information.]

Volume
62
Issue
4
Pages
707-722
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib

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