Value relevance is major area of empirical research in the last ten years.2 Holthausen
and Watts (2001) identify 54 value-relevance studies, only three of which were published
before 1990. Value-relevance research examines the association between a security pricebased
dependent variable and a set of accounting variables. An accounting number is termed
"value relevant" if it is significantly related to the dependent variable.3 Defined in this most general sense, value-relevance research has a long history (Miller and Modigliani 1966);
however, the term came into common usage in the early 1990s (Easton et al. 1993). Papers
by Ohlson (1995, 1999) also use the term "value relevance," in a manner consistent with
empirical studies. As with the other research areas, value-relevance research is controversial