We study the effect of the mandatory adoption of IFRS in Europe in 2005 on conditional conservatism. To capture conditional conservatism, we use three measures: the Basu (1997) measure, the Khan and Watts (2009) measure, and a measure controlling for potential shifts in unconditional...

As a reaction to the corporate scandals of the early 2000s, the US Administration dramatically tightened sanctions against managers who disclose misleading financial information. This paper argues that such a reform might come with some unpleasant macroeconomic effects. The model is cast as a...

Clothed in various formulations, the question of “coherence” is central to management control. Thus it is widely accepted that different forms of control “cannot be used effectively in every situation” (Merchant, 1998: 32, 69) – a statement referring to the contingency framework. It is...

Accounting for research and development (R&D) costs is an open issue. SFAS N°2 mandates that all R&D costs are immediately expensed. International standards prescribe a capitalization of R&D costs if they meet certain criteria (IAS 38). Recent research papers (Healy et al., 2002; Lev and...

Significant difference exists between the market value and book value of firms. It could be attributed to the fact that intangible assets are not reflected in the financial statements. Our resuls indicate a statistical association between the "capitalized goodwill" and the market-to-book ratio,...

We study the supply and demand for European accounting research, referring to author nationality and the country origin of the data to define research as ‘European’. We study both the supply (conference proceedings) and the demand (published papers) for European research. To assess the...

This paper focuses on how forecasts information is disclosed in IPO prospectuses. In France, managers report either detailed forecasts or only a brief summary. We investigate the determinants and consequences of the varying levels of detail provided in these forecasts. Based on a sample of 82...

In the last years of the Internet bubble, many managers provided fraudulent financial statements with the aim at inflating the market value of their firms. Is this shortage of honesty an accident or a buit-in feature of shareholder capitalism? This paper argues that in an economy hosting...

Ces dernières années, la publication du niveau de rémunération des dirigeants a soulevé d’intenses controverses. Un certain nombre d’études ont mis en évidence une relation positive entre le salaire des dirigeants et la performance de la société, aux Etats-Unis et en Grande-...