The Use of Mathematical Models in Financial Accounting
选取财务会计中三个流行的数学模型主题（公开披露后果、市场信息效率、公开披露对私人信息获取激励的影响），在竞争均衡市场模型框架下进行讨论，帮助读者理解这些模型的应用。
Well over a year ago it was proposed that I write a survey paper for this conference which discussed the role of mathematical models in financial accounting. The difficulty with this assignment is that mathematical models have been used to address a wide variety of issues in financial accounting, and a paper which touched on all of them would probably be unable to examine any single one in depth. Therefore, I have chosen in financial accounting three popular mathematical modeling themes and have interpreted these themes in the context of a competitive equilibrium market model, to lend greater cohesiveness to the discussion. I refer to the three topics chosen as: (1) assessing the consequences of public disclosure; (2) formalizing the notion that markets are efficient with respect to information; and (3) understanding the effect of increased public disclosure on private incentives to acquire information. Other areas in financial accounting which use mathematical models, but are not discussed here, include income measurement, valuation models (i.e., models which map accounting variables, or other information, into equi-