The empirical literature in financial accounting is vast. In this overview, it is shown that the results of empirical research support the Decision Usefulness approach to financial reporting. The results also reveal that financial reports do have information content. Value-relevance studies comparing German GAAP and investor-oriented GAAP, like those of the US, demonstrate that there is little difference between the value-relevance of German and US financial reporting. Furthermore, the results indicate that the information content of accounting data varies with the organisation of the financial system and other economical and institutional factors. Several studies about the information content of fair-value-based data versus historical- cost-based data suggest that historical-cost-based accounting data are more relevant for the investors than fair-value-based accounting data. A wide range of empirical studies reveal that financial ratios are useful in the estimation of future company situations, especially as predictor of corporate bankruptcy.