Accounting based valuation models: what have we learned?

The present survey article formed the basis of a presentation by G. Richardson to the 8 July 2003 plenary session of the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand Conference in Brisbane, Australia. The present article reconciles the historical and forecasting branches in the published accounting literature. Prior survey articles have primarily focused either on the historical branch or the forecasting branch. While these approaches have yielded useful insights, they do not attempt to synthesize the link between the two branches of the published literature. An obvious link between the two branches is that the Ohlson model begins with the Residual Income Model as an initial assumption. We believe that there are other links that need further emphasis. In the process, we also review the empirical issues and the evidence within these two branches. We know of no paper to date that has surveyed the empirical evidence on both the historical and forecasting branches of the published literature. In particular, we draw inferences on the following question: on balance, what have we learned from nearly a decade of research on accounting based valuation models and its applications?