III METRICS AND RESEARCH DESIGN
Measuring IFRS Adoption
Below, we describe the construction of our database of IFRS adoption by country-year. While our research question concerns the role of network effects in countries’ adoption decisions, we are unable to obtain complete information on the decision dates for adoption for a broad sample of countries. Consequently, we use actual adoption dates as a gauge for adoption decision dates. We compile information on the status of a country’s IFRS adoption n every year between 2003 and 2008. We begin our database in 2003 because we are interested in IFRS as developed and sponsored by the IASB and 2002 was the first full year of the IASB’s existence; we end our sample in 2008 because data to construct variables in our study were not available beyond 2008 at the time we initiated this project. For the handful of jurisdiction for which we are able to identify IFRS adoption decision dates, we calculate the distance between adoption decision and implementation dates. The mean and median distance is two years. Thus, our data on IFRS adoption between 2003 and 208 correspond, on average, to adoption decisions made between 2001 and 2006.