Book Description

Despite the importance of the IFRS in the international context of financial reporting accounting, we know very little concerning the effects of culture on the application of the IFRS. This dissertation empirically examines whether accounting information comparability and earnings transparency resulting from the IFRS adoption varies depending on cultural and institutional factors. Thus, the discussion considers, whether cultural and institutional factors can provide an explanation for differences in accounting information comparability and earnings transparency under the IFRS. Accordingly, the primary purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the role of secrecy, conservatism, pre-adoption divergence between IFRS and national GAAP, and enforcement on accounting information comparability and earnings transparency following the mandatory IFRS adoption.This dissertation therefore contributes to the accounting literature by presenting two essays. The essays address the research questions related to the goals of the IFRS in relation to two aspects: accounting information comparability and earnings transparency. The first study investigates comparability with regard to secrecy and pre-adoption divergence between IFRS and national GAAP. In this study, it is argued that it is easy to predict whether the IFRS adoption enhances the market reaction of competitors around the earnings announcements of a given firm. The results were documented evidence demonstrating that information transfer at earnings announcements increases following the mandatory adoption of IFRS, suggesting, on average, a high level of comparability. However, following the investigations, it would appear that comparability increases for firms domiciled in countries with a low level of secrecy (i.e., where transparency dominates) and, where there is a low divergence of accounting distance. Consequently, these results suggest that all firms do not apply the IFRS uniformly and that they do not automatically comply with IFRS. The second study investigates earnings transparency by examining the earnings-returns relationship with regard to enforcement and conservatism. In this study, the effects of enforcement and conservatism on earnings transparency were examined following the mandatory adoption of IFRS. The results were documented, which demonstrate that earnings transparency increases for firms domiciled in countries characterized by low conservatism only (i.e., where optimism dominates) and, there are benefits with regard to earnings transparency following IFRS adoption for firms domiciled in countries characterized by a high level of enforcement. This also suggests that IFRS is not being applied in the same way in all countries. Taken together, there are significant cross-country differences in IFRS compliance. Accordingly, comparability and transparency differ depending on where a firm is domiciled. If the firms are domiciled in a supportive environment in terms of applying the IFRS (i.e., where there is transparency, optimism, low divergence of accounting distance and strong enforcement), the level of comparability and transparency are increased.