Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Why do countries adopt International Financial Reporting Standards?

Contents:

Author Info

  • Karthik Ramanna

    () (Harvard Business School, Accounting and Management Unit)

  • Ewa Sletten

    () (MIT Sloan School of Management)

Registered author(s):

    Abstract

    In a sample of 102 non-European Union countries, we study variations in the decision to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). There is evidence that more powerful countries are less likely to adopt IFRS, consistent with more powerful countries being less willing to surrender standard-setting authority to an international body. There is also evidence that the likelihood of IFRS adoption at first increases and then decreases in the quality of countries' domestic governance institutions, consistent with IFRS being adopted when governments are capable of timely decision making and when the opportunity and switching cost of domestic standards are relatively low. We do not find evidence that levels of and expected changes in foreign trade and investment flows in a country affect its adoption decision: thus, we cannot confirm that IFRS lowers information costs in more globalized economies. Consistent with the presence of network effects in IFRS adoption, we find that a country is more likely to adopt IFRS if other countries in its geographical region are IFRS adopters.

    Download Info

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Bibliographic Info

    Paper provided by Harvard Business School in its series Harvard Business School Working Papers with number 09-102.

    as in new window
    Length: 49 pages
    Date of creation: Jan 2009
    Date of revision: Mar 2009
    Handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:09-102

    Contact details of provider:
    Postal: Soldiers Field, Boston, Massachusetts 02163
    Phone: 617.495.6000
    Web page: http://www.hbs.edu/
    More information through EDIRC

    Related research

    Keywords:

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    References

    No references listed on IDEAS
    You can help add them by filling out this form.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as in new window

    Cited by:
    1. Kothari, S.P. & Ramanna, Karthik & Skinner, Douglas J., 2010. "Implications for GAAP from an analysis of positive research in accounting," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 246-286, December.
    2. Dima, Bogdan & Dima(Cristea), Stefana Maria & Moldovan, Nicoleta & Pirtea, Marilen Gabriel, 2010. "National legislative systems and foreign standards and regulations: The case of International Financial Reporting Standards adoption," MPRA Paper 27172, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Lists

    This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:09-102

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Soebagio Notosoehardjo).

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

    If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.