Les pratiques d'évaluation et de publication des entreprises françaises, allemandes et américaines : le cas des éléments incorporels

In the past few years, the growing number of mergers and acquisitions lead to the increasing presence of goodwill in balance sheets. Intangible expenses are also more and more important. However, accounting standards concerning intangibles are not homogeneous. Two indexes: the ?tendency to prudence? and the ?tendency to secrecy? are created to identify the financial accounting and disclosure choices related to intangibles. The ?tendency to prudence? index is based on the goodwill and other intangibles accounting method choices of firms and their impact on the income whereas the ?tendency to secrecy? index is based on the goodwill and other intangibles disclosure levels by firms. The latter original index is an index of disclosure, which is converted to an index of ?tendency to secrecy?. Two different worksheets are developed in order to evaluate the extent of tendencies. The ?tendency to prudence? and the ?tendency to secrecy? indexes are calculated (for each firm) from Annual Report of 417 German, French and US firms from four different activity sectors.