Value Added Reporting And Research

It is clear that value added methods provide relevant, useful information for financial analysis, market valuation, and financial decision making in corporate settings. Value added methods can be used in ratio analysis, in the determination of earnings as an earnings management tools, and can be substituted for earnings in equity valuation. When included in a wealth measurement it can vastly improve the quality of decision making. Riahi-Belkaoui covers these topics and more. His book is a probing, essential examination of what the latest value added methods are and what they can do, not only for accounting professionals but for academics and top corporate management as well.

Value added reporting is popular in most European countries and in New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia. Most emerging countries are using it too, or considering it. Riahi-Belkaoui explicates latest developments in value-added practice and research, first covering the meaning of the concept, the history behind value added's development and its implied advantages and disadvantages. He then covers the derivation of a value added report, using a fictional case and the resulting data, before moving to an overview of the empirical literature most concerned with value added in the United States. Documenting the overall behavior of the net value added earnings policy model, he lays the foundation for more contextually specific approaches and investigates the usefulness of the substitution of net-value added in equity valuation. The book concludes with an examination of whether accounting knowledge is associated with a decision maker's tendency to ignore value added in wealth measurement in favor of the profit concept. Riahi-Belkaoui draws heavily on his own important writings, to further illustrate and explain the methods and benefits of value added approaches in accounting and other forms of financial decision making.

A probing examination of the latest research on value added approaches to financial accounting.

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Riahi-Belkaoui (accounting, U. of Illinois-Chicago) first reviews the research and practice of a reporting form that is popular with foreign multinationals and is mandatory in most European and many former British colonial countries. Then he examines its merits both for determining earnings and for inclusion in market valuation models in general and the Feltham and Ohlson model in particular. He appends eight pieces of his published research; much of the rest of the material has also been published in . Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

AHMED RIAHI-BELKAOUI is Professor of Accounting at the College of Business Administration, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and Chairman of the Cultural Studies and Accounting Research Committee, American Accounting Association (Internal Accounting Section).