This paper studies how legal sanctions and enforcement affect brokers' conflicts of interest emanating from investment banking activities. We exploit the recent adoption of the Market Abuse Directive (MAD) across European countries and use the variation in legal sanctions and enforcement that...

We investigate the way auditor characteristics (i.e., reputation and industry specialization) interact on the consequences of mandatory IFRS adoption in Europe in terms of accounting conservatism. Indeed, a mandatory adoption setting may control for firm-level reporting incentives when gauging...

Since 2005, all European Union listed firms must comply with IFRS. The resulting mandatory changes in accounting methods have substantially affected reported earnings predictions. Using the FactSet/JCF database that collects 2005 earnings forecasts under both IFRS and local GAAP for European...

Several studies show that mandatory IFRS adoption resulted in positive capital market impacts for both investors (higher stock liquidity and lower information asymmetry) and firms (lower cost of equity capital). However, the observed impacts are only mean impacts since the characteristics of...

The relationship between accounting information and capital markets has been the subject of numerous studies, especially in the US. The purpose of this article is to examine the corresponding evidence in Europe. This review classifies the European literature into three groups: studies of the...

Recent years have witnessed the adoption of new laws regulating the financial analyst profession in the US. The EU followed by passing the Market Abuse Directive and two subsequent Directives in 2003. Were these Directives necessary and did they reach their target? We first analyze whether...