The application of the fair value concept in accounting

In the article there are discussed the advantages and disadvantages of fair value as a measurement basis for a great number of accounting objects and above all for financial instruments. This is done on the basis of a study of the experience of Bulgarian and foreign experts. The concept of fair value has been laid down in the treatments of the International Accounting Standards, but it has given ground for sceptics to be doubtful about its merits. Some of those go to extreme evaluations of it and define it as one of the factors instigating financial crises. That renders the issues under study particularly topical at the current stage, in view of the apparent tendency toward a likely recession and debt crisis for part of the countries, whose accounting basis are the International Accounting Standards. The aim pursued in the choice of initial and subsequent evaluation of accounting objects is reduced above all to protecting the users of information such as potential investors, creditors, owners of the capital of companies, etc. This is the field to which the opinions and considerations of the presented experts and those of the author himself mainly gravitate.