Our purpose is to examine how investors have been affected by the financial crisis and the influence it has had on the importance of financial statements and specific accounting variables. We also compare the importance of the two most significant accounting variables, earnings and book value (equity) before and after the crisis. We examine which variable gains, in value relevance terms, due to the crisis. Our analysis is based on Ohlson's model using price models and we examine the period 2002 to 2014.
After the crisis we expect a decline in value relevance of financial statements due to the fact that, the crisis has created an increase in uncertainty about the financial position of companies. For this reason it is logical to assume that investors were looking for additional information about the financial position of companies beyond financial statements. Also we expect to show that, earnings have gained in terms of value relevance against book value. This is due to the fact that when uncertainty exists investors are expected to pay attention to the ability of the company to produce earnings (that help it to repay loan installments) and to be less interested in financial position as expressed by equity.