The Impact Of Country-Level vs Firm-Level Factors On The Effectiveness Of IFRS Adoption: The Case Of European Union

Abstract

The mandatory adoption of IFRS has been encouraged worldwide, with the objective to enhance the quality of accounting information. However, this effort is challenged by the argument that several factors affecting financial reporting incentives still vary across countries. Also, Gaio (2010) indicates that firm-level factors also have significant explanatory power on earning quality. Therefore, it is doubtful whether the mandatory adoption of IFRS can always lead to better quality of accounting information.

This paper examines the effect of country-level and firm-level factors on value relevance of earnings and book value of equity. Among several country-level factors, this paper focuses on investor protection - proxied by anti-director right index (La Porta et al., 1998). In this study, firm-level factors refer to firm characteristics which allow or induce high use of managerial discretion. These characteristics are proxied by firm size, cash flow volatility, sales volatility, and incidence of negative earnings.

Different from prior literatures which focus on “level” of value relevance, this paper examines the effect of country-level and firm-level factors on “change” in value relevance of earnings and book value of equity, arisen from the mandatory adoption of IFRS in the year 2005. By comparing value relevance of earnings and book value of equity among European Union countries during the years 1999-2007, the results indicate that the adoption of IFRS leads to improvement in value relevance. In addition, both country-level and firm-level factors have significant influence on the degree of improvement in value relevance from the IFRS adoption. In particular, the firms which operate in a weak investor protection environment and have firm characteristics which induce or allow the managers to use high managerial discretion (i.e., small size, high cash flow volatility, high sales volatility, and frequent incidences of loss) do not experience significant improvement in value relevance from IFRS adoption.

The results imply that the IFRS adoption does not ensure better quality of accounting information. The improvement of the quality of accounting information depends on both country and firm characteristics, which influence financial reporting incentives.