EXAMINE THE PAST FOR GOING FURTHER: A LITERATURE REVIEW IN THE FIELD OF FAIR VALUE

The current study is part of the scientific approach being assumed at the beginning of the Ph.D. as the theme 'New valence of evaluation in accounting' under the guidance of prof. univ. dr. Dumitru Matis. This article aims to realize a more comprehensive study of relevant literature in accounting with fair value as the main subject. We have built our study attempting to answer the following research questions: How much fair value activity has there been since 2008? What research topics are being addressed? Who is leading fair value research? What are the limitations of current research? To achieve our proposed objectives we analyzed two databases (Science Direct and Business Source Premier) during 2008-2011, analyzing in detail a total of 22 articles divided into five specific research directions: international regulations on fair value accounting, fair Value Accounting and Financial Crisis, financial reporting at fair value, the relevance of fair value and fair value versus historical cost. With this research we try to see 'what is known' in the field of fair value so far . In addition to qualitative analysis which we performed to discover the interest of researchers in this field, we conducted a quantitative analysis concerning the reported studies , being divided into research themes, research methodology and year of the article publication. Quantitative research results are those anticipated, that the most 'fair value activity ' took place in 2008 and 2009, surveys having as main research theme international regulations on fair value accounting