In ‘Proper inferences or a market for excuses? The capital-market effects of mandatory IFRS adoption’ (2013) Christensen, Hail and Leuz reject the criticisms in Barth and Israeli (2013). They accept that ‘IFRS adoption may have been a pre-condition for enforcement changes to have an effect ie, it is possible that similar effects would not have occurred if the countries had still followed domestic GAAP.’ But they argue that ‘the conceptual basis for this hypothesis is not obvious as it implies that IFRS would be easier to enforce than prior local standards (eg, German or UK GAAP)’.47