A major motivation for our study is the lack of evidence on the influencing factors of countries’ adoption of IFRS for SMEs for single accounts of private firms. Private firms differ from public listed firms in several ways. First, while we acknowledge that the group of non-pub- licly accountable entities is heterogeneous (Sellhorn and Gornik-Tomaszewski 2006), the overall majority of private firms with concentrated ownership are not organised as groups and therefore tend to prepare single accounts (unconsolidated accounts) rather than group accounts (consoli- dated accounts) (Nobes 2010). The distinction in the set of accounts is important with respect to the legal origin of countries (La Porta et al. 1998, 2008, Goncharov and Werner 2009). For instance, in many code law countries in Europe, single accounts of private firms have a clear focus on regulatory purposes, such as dividend, insolvency, or tax issues (Ball and Shivakumar 2005, Burgstahler et al. 2006, Katz 2006). This suggests that a switch to IFRS for SMEs as the primary set of accounting standards is particularly costly in these countries, because changing accounting rules would imply modifying tax and commercial laws (Nobes 2010).
Second, in the absence of organised capital markets, the (debt) contracting role of accounting dominates in non-public settings. In this way, the preferences of international capital providers and their forces are likely to have influence upon countries’ accounting choices (Pacter 2012). For instance, IFRS for SMEs requires the preparation of a cash flow statement which is particu- larly useful for capital providers (Pacter 2012). Given that there are major differences between domestic accounting rules (local generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP)) and IFRS for SMEs, developing countries are likely to have incentives to adopt a set of high quality accounting standards with more standardised financial disclosures to attract external capital from institutions such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Barth et al. 2008, Gordon et al. 2012). Prior studies at a firm level provide evidence that differences in domestic GAAP relative to IFRS can impose costs on market participants (e.g. financial ana- lysts), and adoption of international accounting standards is likely to provide more useful infor- mation to external users (Ashbaugh and Pincus 2001, Bae et al. 2008).
Our sample is based on the list of jurisdictions on the IASB’s website and covers 128 countries around the world as of 2013. The IASB’s jurisdiction profiles provide a detailed summary of each jurisdiction’s adoption status of IFRS for SMEs, as well as other accounting regulation issues (e.g. adoption of full IFRS; regulation of local GAAP). We apply logit and, in robustness tests, multi-period logit regression models to assess the likelihood of adoption of IFRS for SMEs. We use theories of accounting regulation to develop our hypotheses. In line with recent account- ing literature (Bushman and Landsman 2010, Kothari et al. 2010, Leuz 2010), we argue that these theories provide a helpful framework to understand why jurisdictions regulate GAAP and how regulators respond to market forces that affect the demand for and the supply of accounting information.
A major motivation for our study is the lack of evidence on the influencing factors of countries’ adoption of IFRS for SMEs for single accounts of private firms. Private firms differ from public listed firms in several ways. First, while we acknowledge that the group of non-pub- licly accountable entities is heterogeneous (Sellhorn and Gornik-Tomaszewski 2006), the overall majority of private firms with concentrated ownership are not organised as groups and therefore tend to prepare single accounts (unconsolidated accounts) rather than group accounts (consoli- dated accounts) (Nobes 2010). The distinction in the set of accounts is important with respect to the legal origin of countries (La Porta et al. 1998, 2008, Goncharov and Werner 2009). For instance, in many code law countries in Europe, single accounts of private firms have a clear focus on regulatory purposes, such as dividend, insolvency, or tax issues (Ball and Shivakumar 2005, Burgstahler et al. 2006, Katz 2006). This suggests that a switch to IFRS for SMEs as the primary set of accounting standards is particularly costly in these countries, because changing accounting rules would imply modifying tax and commercial laws (Nobes 2010).Second, in the absence of organised capital markets, the (debt) contracting role of accounting dominates in non-public settings. In this way, the preferences of international capital providers and their forces are likely to have influence upon countries’ accounting choices (Pacter 2012). For instance, IFRS for SMEs requires the preparation of a cash flow statement which is particu- larly useful for capital providers (Pacter 2012). Given that there are major differences between domestic accounting rules (local generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP)) and IFRS for SMEs, developing countries are likely to have incentives to adopt a set of high quality accounting standards with more standardised financial disclosures to attract external capital from institutions such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Barth et al. 2008, Gordon et al. 2012). Prior studies at a firm level provide evidence that differences in domestic GAAP relative to IFRS can impose costs on market participants (e.g. financial ana- lysts), and adoption of international accounting standards is likely to provide more useful infor- mation to external users (Ashbaugh and Pincus 2001, Bae et al. 2008).Our sample is based on the list of jurisdictions on the IASB’s website and covers 128 countries around the world as of 2013. The IASB’s jurisdiction profiles provide a detailed summary of each jurisdiction’s adoption status of IFRS for SMEs, as well as other accounting regulation issues (e.g. adoption of full IFRS; regulation of local GAAP). We apply logit and, in robustness tests, multi-period logit regression models to assess the likelihood of adoption of IFRS for SMEs. We use theories of accounting regulation to develop our hypotheses. In line with recent account- ing literature (Bushman and Landsman 2010, Kothari et al. 2010, Leuz 2010), we argue that these theories provide a helpful framework to understand why jurisdictions regulate GAAP and how regulators respond to market forces that affect the demand for and the supply of accounting information.
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