the magnitude of the comparability benefits is presumably a function of the closeness
of local GAAP to IFRS e.g., Bae et al. 2008; Daske et al. 2008. If true, the benefits in the case of the United States are likely to be modest, since IFRS already closely resemble U.S. GAAP in many areas. More importantly, this implies that many comparability improvements for U.S. firms should have already been realized when the bulk of countries with large accounting differences between prior local GAAP and either IFRS or U.S. GAAP switched to IFRS in recent years. In essence, the switch of other countries to IFRS should have already conferred positive externalities on U.S. firms