Abstract: Historical cost measurement is becoming more and more unrelated with value relevance. The fair value measurement is becoming widely used; and the relationship between the fair value measurement and the decision usefulness of accounting information is attracting a lot of attention. Taking the IPO companies in China’s A-share main board stock market during the period of 2007-2012 as the samples, this paper examines the influence of the fair value measurement on the decision usefulness of accounting information from the two aspects of investor sentiment and the level of market development. The findings show that the variable profit and loss of fair value per share of the sample company are negatively correlated with IPO investor sentiment pricing, which implies that fair value measurement can improve the quality of accounting information, inhibit IPO investor sentiment pricing, and improve the decision usefulness of accounting information. Further study shows that the improvement of the development level of market can play an active role in restricting the earnings management space of the fair value measurement item and improving the decision usefulness of the fair value accounting information.

Key words: fair value measurement; decision usefulness; investor sentiment