ABSTRACT
The International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) have been developed to harmonize corporate accounting practices and to answer the need for high-quality standards that result in high-quality information, transparency and comparability in issuing financial reports. 1 One of the major changes introduced by the international standards has been the ability to recognize certain assets and liabilities at fair value. Unlike the US accounting standards (US GAAP) that permit the measurement of only financial instruments at fair value, 2 the IFRS allow the measurement of various financial statement items such as financial instruments, investment property, investment in subsidiaries and investment in associates and joint ventures at fair value. 3 As such, while fair value accounting in the USA is primarily relevant to financial institutions, fair value accounting in countries using IFRS affects firms in various industries.
