Prior research suggests that there are significant differences in how investors perceive the reliability of fair values across the fair value hierarchy. An unaddressed question in this stream of research is whether cross-country differences in institutional factors are able to mediate...

The paper analyses the effects of three sets of accounting rules for financial instruments - Old IAS before IAS 39 became effective, Current IAS or US GAAP, and the Full Fair Value (FFV) model proposed by the Joint Working Group (JWG) - on the financial statements of banks. We develop a...