This paper addresses the question whether voluntary adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is associated with lower earnings management. Ball et al. (Journal of Accounting and Economics, 36(1-3), pp. 235-270, 2003) argue that adopting high quality standards might be a...

This paper contributes to the recent literature on financial reporting quality in private (i.e. non-listed) companies (Ball and Shivakumar, 2005; Burgstahler et al., 2006) by examining whether in these types of companies Big 4 audit firms, as high quality auditors, provide a constraint on earnings...

Anglo-American countries like the US and the UK allow companies to switch auditors every year. In contrast, some continental European countries restrict auditor switching by allowing only renewable long-term audit mandates. This paper aims to analyse the impact of renewable long-term audit...

While the audit reporting debate has a long history, a number of recent regulatory initiatives and policy reviews increase the likelihood of change in this area. The purpose of this study is to use this momentum and examine whether there is consensus between audit report users and auditors with...

This study examines whether accruals models' performance, in terms of predictive accuracy and power to detect earnings management, varies across strongly heterogeneous samples, such as different countries. We analyse the performance of two accruals estimation models, that is, the Modified Jones...

We investigate the determinants of corporate financial reporting in an unregulated setting. Prior to the First World War, limited liability companies in Belgium were obliged to publish financial statements, but financial reporting was virtually unregulated. Investor protection was generally very...