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This book provides the theoretical background and analyses capital market research related to the IAS/IFRS adoption in Europe, which is one of the most important and controversial events in the history of accounting. It adopts both an investor and a firm perspective and therefore investigates the effects of adopting IAS/IFRS on the decision-usefulness of financial reporting for investors as well as on the firms' cost of capital. The book also focuses on fair value accounting, which is widely controversial. All these issues are of considerable interest for standard setters and policy makers, whose primary aims are in fact to provide investors with useful information for their decision-making process and to allow firms to have access to a more efficient and cost-effective capital market.