Lijie Yao, ‘Are liquidity improvements around the mandatory adoption of IFRS attributable to comparability effects or to quality effects?’, looks at the effect on liquidity of IFRS adoption in 22 countries (seven non-EU). The sample is 5,045 firms (29% non-EU). The period covered is 1993–2007. Firms from non-IFRS countries provide a control sample; these are mostly firms from Japan and the US.