Mandatory Adoption of IFRS in Emerging Markets: The Case of Turkey

European-listed companies and many emerging countries have been required to present their consolidated financial statements in compliance with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) since 2005. Having cross-border comparability and transparency with this uniform accounting system is expected to provide higher accounting quality and value relevance. Evaluation of financial performance in terms of value relevance of IFRS is not only vital for existing investors or stakeholders but also for those who want to invest at the international level. Thus, in this study, we examine the value relevance of earnings and book value of equity on share prices through using Ohlson (1995) valuation model. While 2001 to 2004 is conducted as the pre-IFRS period, 2005-2008 is a post-IFRS period to display the change in value relevance in the same number of years. Our sample includes only nonfinancial firms that operate on BIST index. Since financial firms are subject to different regulations, we exclude them from the sample. The results show that the accounting information produced under IFRS is more value relevant. We test the value relevance with both cross-sectional and pooled regression for the periods. In addition, we use panel data analysis (survival analysis) to validate the increase in value relevance between the periods. We also test the firm size and earnings announcement effect on value relevance for robustness.