Dealing with private companies only, our research should be of interest for the EU
Commission in evaluating the impact of the current financial reporting regulation and for
EU national regulators, who are left with a certain degree of flexibility in endorsing parts
of the European legislation. Given that standard setters and regulators are asked to take
into account the effects and the consequences of the standards they develop/suggest
(European Financial Reporting Advisory Group, 2011), providing this kind of empirical
evidence is, in our opinion, crucial. This also permits us to reply to the Maijoor (2010) call
to the academia ‘‘to be more involved in policy-orientated and normative debates, of
course after having done proper research based on evidence-gathering’’ (p. 330).