The contributions of this paper are several. First, this study complements prior literature by
examining countries’ adoption of IFRS for SMEs, where private firms account for a large
portion of economic activity and are a key to sustainable economic growth (Bernard et al.
2014). Prior literature limited its attention mostly to countries’ adoption of full IFRS for domestic
listed firms (Hope et al. 2006, Ramanna and Sletten 2009). The setting of countries’ adoption of
IFRS for SMEs has several features that allow us to further examine the cost-benefit trade-offs
which countries face with the regulated supply of accounting information.