Questions about the applicability to the EU of these papers’ findings are not restricted to
those with negative findings on comparability. In particular, in addition to the points made in
relation to Horton et al (2013), it is doubtful how far Wang (2014) can be viewed as a study of
the effects of mandatory IFRS adoption in the EU. Of the two tests in the paper, the first is not
framed as a study of the effects of IFRS, but as a study of the effects of common standards.
However, it appears that the common standards are in fact IFRS. The first test also covers
information transfers involving voluntary adopters before mandatory IFRS adoption. But 91%
of the observations in this test are for 2005 or later, so it is likely that the results are driven
by mandatory adoption. Perhaps more significant is that, in both tests, only about half the
observations are for EU firms, so it would be unsafe to assume that the results apply to the EU.