International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and their predecessor, International Accounting Standards (IAS) are gaining in worldwide recognition. All publicly traded companies in the EU must adopt them by 2005 and many other countries either have adopted them or plan to do so in the near...

We investigate (1) whether the variation in accounting standards across national boundaries relative to International Accounting Standards (IAS) has an impact on the ability of financial analysts to forecast non-US firms' earnings accurately, and (2) whether analyst forecast accuracy changes...

This paper investigates the accounting and disclosure practices of Ramp;D firms in the discretionary reporting environment of Australia, by examining the relationship between the investment opportunity sets of high research intensive versus low research intensive firms and the mapping to...

This paper presents and compares results from two empirical studies into the attitudes of financial executives of large German corporations towards a global harmonization of accounting principles and towards the adaptation of German accounting to Anglo-American Standards. The first of the...

The paper provides comments on three significant issues facing New Zealand standard setters as the world enters the new millennium. These issues are (i) the funding of accounting standard setting; (ii) harmonising with standards of overseas jurisdictions; and (iii) meeting the information...

In this study we compare the timeliness and conservatism of reported earnings across the U.S. and U.K. GAAP regimes. We present a theoretical model of the differential speeds of recognition of good news and bad news. This suggests informative and relatively robust ways of measuring dimensions of...

When the editor asked me to write a commentary on international accounting standards and their role in world capital markets my first thought was quot;what can I add to the debate?quot; In recent years much has been written about the subject by many eminent writers. And the flow of commentary...

This study examines the relevancy of U.S. GAAP and non-U.S. GAAP financial data provided in Form 6-K by 80 foreign firms. The results are inconclusive. The results were not exchange related or report period related. Other tests were performed to determine whether there was a difference between...

The Securities Exchange Commission has introduced a Roadmap that describes a process leading to mandatory use of IFRS by domestic issuers by 2014. The SEC justifies this initiative on the grounds that global standardization yields cost savings and an ultimate gain in comparability, facilitating...

Financial institutions have been at the forefront of the debate on the controversial shift in international standards from historical cost accounting to mark-to-market accounting. We show that the trade-offs at stake in this debate are far from one-sided. While the historical cost regime leads...