Roychowdhury and Watts [2007. Asymmetric timeliness of earnings, market-to-book and
conservatism in financial reporting. Journal of Accounting and Economics.] provide a thought provoking
discussion of an important topic and consider a controversial role of accounting
inconsistent with the valuation perspective of accounting currently adopted by standard setters. The
paper uses a contracts-based view of accounting to explain the empirical relation between two
measures of conservatism, the market-to-book ratio and asymmetric timeliness. Although the
predictions from their framework are consistent with the previously documented negative correlation
between these measures, suggesting this criticism of asymmetric timeliness may be misguided, I will
be surprised if their paper eliminates the controversy over these measures of conservatism.