Until recently, it was unclear whether goodwill or intangible assets are a possible consideration for newly issued stocks according to Swiss Joint Stock Corporations Law. This is especially problematic because Swiss Corporations law has a nominal capital approach under which it is generally...

Corruption of public officials, in particular bribery, has long been recognized as a potentially serious problem in every polity. Large foreign corporations, based in developed jurisdictions, are identified as common culprits. The first legislation in the world to recognize and seek to curb the...

The purpose of this paper is to study whether or not the convergence towards a 'high quality' accounting standard will be the natural result. One of the purposes of IASB is to make high quality accounting standards because of the convergence. It seems that the best strategy for the convergence,...

Serafeim [2011] examines the determinants and economic consequences of embedded value (EV) reporting, a voluntary disclosure arrangement in the life insurance industry. He finds substantial reductions in bid-ask spreads for EV reporting firms, and links the occurrence of this disclosure practice...

This is the second article of a two-part series analyzing the economic and policy factors related to the potential adoption of IFRS by the United States. In Part I (see Hail et al. 2010), we develop the conceptual framework for our analysis and discuss economic factors driving the costs and...

In December 2005, the first draft of the new Stock Corporation and Financial Reporting Code has been published. Amongst other things, the definition of the term asset is introduced to the new Swiss Code of Obligations. The legal certainty concerning indebtness (i.e., impaired equity capital in...

This article is Part I of a two-part series analyzing the economic and policy factors related to the potential adoption of IFRS by the United States. In this part, we develop the conceptual framework for our analysis of potential costs and benefits from IFRS adoption in the United States....

This report provides a review of the academic literature relevant to the mandatory adoption of IFRS reporting for member countries of the European Union in 2005 and an empirical analysis of the associated capital-market effects. In the empirical analysis, we focus on the effects on firms' costs...

This paper is concerned with the allegation that fair value accounting rules have contributed significantly to the recent financial crisis. It focuses on one particular channel for that contribution: the impact of fair value on actual or potential failure of banks. The paper compares four...

In this paper, I draw parallels between the literatures on the effects of law on the financial development of countries and on the effects of accounting standards on financial reporting outcomes. My central thesis is that these literatures are complementary in terms of what they have to say...