To further investigate the last point, we repeat our analyses distinguishing private companies
that are controlled by listed companies from the rest of the sample. As previous literature
has pointed out that companies can exploit the level of flexibility embedded in
IFRS to pursue their own reporting interests (Daske et al., 2008; Kvaal & Nobes, 2012;
Leuz, 2010), separate analyses were conducted taking into consideration firms’ incentives.
Overall, we find that earnings quality shows signs of deterioration in both groups of firms.
However, the analysis of the differences indicates a slightly worse impact among subsidiaries
of listed companies, especially in relation to the use of abnormal accruals. Robustness
tests using only the set of IFRS adopters, thus controlling for endogeneity problems, confirm
our main results.