At the peak of the financial crisis in October 2008, the IASB amended IAS 39 to grant companies the option of abandoning fair value recognition for selected financial assets. Using a comprehensive global sample of publicly listed IFRS banks, we find that banks use the reclassification option to...

We examine the impact of global IFRS adoption on cross-border equity investments by individual investors. Our proxy for cross-border equity investments is trading volume in the Open Market at Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The Open Market is a segment designed for German individual investors to trade...

This study examines the relation between asset liquidity and stock liquidity across 47 countries. In support of the valuation uncertainty hypothesis, we find that firms with greater asset liquidity on average have higher stock liquidity. More importantly, our study shows that asset liquidity...

EU politicians pressured the IASB to change the accounting rules for financial assets at the peak of the financial crisis in October 2008. The new rules enabled banks to forgo the recognition of unrealized fair value losses through reclassifications. This paper puts the ensuing regulatory relief...

In this paper, we examine the benefits of accounting comparability for cross-border investments in private firms. Exploiting a quasi-experimental setting we examine the real effect of an increase in accounting comparability using a difference-in-differences research design. We find that the...

This paper studies how financial statement comparability affects the cost of capital and investor welfare. We show that the cost of capital decreases with comparability if and only if the quality of accounting standards is sufficiently high, thus supporting the relative importance of...

Regulators frequently relax accounting rules during a financial crisis as a means of regulatory forbearance. The new accounting options provide banks with an opportunity for an accrual-based increase in their regulatory capital. The use of such an accounting option helps reduce the costs of...

At the peak of the financial crisis in October 2008, the IASB amended IAS 39 to grant companies the option of abandoning fair value recognition for selected financial assets. Using a comprehensive global sample of publicly listed IFRS banks, we find that banks use the reclassification option to...

Eine der wesentlichen Gründe für das Entstehen und den Verlauf der Finanzkrise dürfte in der Intransparenz moderner Kapitalmärkte liegen. Diese Intransparenz begünstigt einerseits das Entstehen von spekulativen Blasen. Andererseits ist die mangelnde Transparenz wohl wesentlich für die...

The aim of this paper is to examine what has been the role of information provision to the market throughout the crisis. We consider two main sources of information to the market, financial statements and information provided by credit rating agencies. We examine how these sources of information...