4. Research design
4.1. Sample selection
An initial sample of the 500 top-listed companies on the ASX for the period between 2003 and 2008 (i.e., three years before and three years after the switch to IFRS which occurred at the end of 2005) is identified. All financial information is gathered from the OSIRIS and Bloomberg databases and 74 companies are eliminated due to missing data leaving 426 companies. The final sample consists of 200 companies selected from the above resulting in 1200 firm year observations (See Table 1). The sample of firms remains constant in the pre-/post-IFRS adoption periods in order to control for firm-specific factors.