Within the European Union, the IAS-Regulation has harmonized applicable accounting standards for consolidated financial statements of capital market oriented companies by requiring IFRS since 2005. Regarding enforcement of financial reporting, the IAS-Regulation offered only small guidance for...

This study investigates whether the 2009 German Accounting Law Modernization Act has affected the reporting and accounting practices of German private firms. In reforming German accounting standards, numerous accounting options were deleted, several accounting rules were transferred from IFRS to...

This study examines the predictive power of comprehensive income and its individual components within the homogenous institutional setting of German IFRS firms. The results could be relevant for the standard setters IASB and FASB and their joint project “Financial Statement Presentation”. We...

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) contain several policy options. This paper examines the choices made in 2008/9 IFRS financial statements by large listed companies from five countries on all the options that are observable. We compare these choices with those that had been made...

Using a matched sample of 1,806 firm-year observations from Germany and the United States over the sample period of 2005 to 2010, this paper examines audit practice differences between both countries. Our empirical results show qualitative similar results with regard to audit tenure effects on...

This study presents empirical evidence concerning the effect of different accounting standard on earnings management. Prior studies have shown that accounting standards influence earnings management. Tighter accounting standards regime restricts management's descretion to manipulate accruals,...

This paper takes advantage of a regulation in Europe that allows member states to prescribe lighter reporting requirements for smaller unlisted firms. Under this framework firm size is measured using three variables – total assets, revenues, and number of employees – over which firms have...

The paper analyses the different accounting methods for strategic investments in separate financial statements according to IFRS. Furthermore it compares the accounting methods according to international standards with German GAAP, including the statements of the German professional institute of...

Section 340f of the German Commercial Code allows banks to provision against the special risks inherent to the banking business by building hidden reserves. Beyond risk provisioning, these reserves are implicitly accepted as an earnings management device. By analyzing financial statements of...

The paper analyses the timing of disclosing financial statements for small and medium enterprises (SME) in Germany in 2007 and 2008. Comparisons of different regional areas and different company sizes are made and possible explanations for the results discussed. -- Rechnungslegungspolitik ;...