Regulators such as the SEC and standard setting bodies such as the FASB and the IASB argue the case for the conceptual desirability of fair value measurement, notably on the relevance dimension. Recent standards on financial instruments and certain non-financial items adopt the new measurement...

This paper examines issues pertaining to standard setting in an increasingly interconnected world. It is argued that many present day accounting standards are flawed, generally because of inherent compromises welded into their structure, yielding needless complexity and sometimes absurd results....

By convention, the quality of an audit is understood to relate to the joint probability that its conduct results in the detection and reporting of material financial statement errors. Early research into this phenomenon suggested a positive relationship between audit firm size and audit quality....

In 2002, the European Union (EU) Parliament passed a regulation that requires consolidated and simple accounts for all companies listed in the EU to use International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for fiscal years starting after January 1, 2005. This change in accounting systems will have...

Using a sample of Spanish listed firms for the period 1997-2002 we find that firms where the CEO has low influence over the functioning of the board of directors show a greater degree of accounting conservatism. We measure the influence of the CEO over the board of directors using two aggregate...

This paper is a response to the critical comments of Alexander (2006) and Nobes (2006) on our article on revenue recognition, which was published last year in this journal (Wuuml;stemann and Kierzek 2005). While Alexander primarily objects to our statement that there is a 'requirement of legal...

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) have recently been adopted in a number of jurisdictions, including the European Union. Despite the importance of IFRS in the context of global accounting standards harmonization, little is known regarding what institutional factors influence...

We test the assertion that a consequence of voluntarily adopting International Accounting Standards (IAS) is the enhanced ability to attract foreign capital. Using a unique database that reports firm-level holdings of over 25,000 mutual funds from around the world, our multivariate tests find...

This study examines reporting practices of a sample of foreign listed and domestic-only listed companies from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan and Australia to determine the extent to which companies voluntarily use quot;internationalquot; standards. Two types of use of non-national...