IFRS Framework and Fair Value: From Historical Cost to Market Measurement (IFRS in Practice)

Why did international standards move away from the old accounting world of prudence, realised profit, and historical cost, and towards a system far more open to fair value, current conditions, and market-based measurement?This book offers a rigorous study of the IFRS Conceptual Framework and places fair value at the centre of a wider theoretical shift in financial reporting. Rather than treating fair value as a narrow technical issue, the book shows how it reflects a deeper passage from classical accounting doctrine towards a more financial and market-oriented logic. Historical cost once stood as the core of external reporting because it supported caution, reliability, completed transactions, creditor protection, and the defence of capital. IFRS changed that landscape. The Conceptual Framework now gives stronger weight to decision usefulness, relevance, faithful representation, current value, and the informational needs of investors, lenders, and other creditors.A close reading of the Framework reveals how this transformation took place. The analysis starts from the status and purpose of the Framework, then examines the move from IAS to IFRS, the primacy of capital providers, and the changing role of prudence. From there, the book studies the doctrinal strength of historical cost, including its links with static accounting logic, capital maintenance, reliability, verifiability, and realised outcomes. It then moves into the heart of the issue: measurement. Historical cost, fair value, value in use, fulfilment value, and current cost are analysed not merely as technical bases, but as competing ways of understanding assets, liabilities, performance, and equity.Particular attention is given to fair value as the clearest sign of the financial turn in IFRS. Fair value is examined as a market-participant measure, as a source of volatility, as a driver of estimation uncertainty, and as a challenge to the older accounting logic of prudential stability. The book also studies the effect of fair value on profit, equity, comparability, performance analysis, recognition, disclosure, and the communication role of financial statements. A final assessment then asks whether IFRS still serves accounting doctrine or whether it now serves financial market valuation logic more than traditional accounting thought.Written in a clear but academically serious style, this book is designed for researchers, lecturers, PhD and MSc students, auditors, accountants, regulators, standard-setters, and finance professionals who want a deeper understanding of the conceptual foundations of IFRS. It is especially useful for readers interested in fair value, the Conceptual Framework, accounting theory, financial reporting, and the intellectual movement from historical cost tradition to the market logic of modern international standards.Far more than a guide to one measurement basis, this work is a critical study of how IFRS redefined the meaning of reporting itself. Read more