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iDEA: DREXEL LIBRARIES E-REPOSITORY AND ARCHIVES

iDEA: DREXEL LIBRARIES E-REPOSITORY AND ARCHIVES

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Effects of IFRS adoption on earnings quality

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Title
Effects of IFRS adoption on earnings quality: Evidence from Canada
Author(s)
Ta, Hai Q.
Advisor(s)
Ndubizu, Gordian A.
Keywords
Accounting; Earnings management; International financial reporting standards
Date
2014-06
Publisher
Drexel University
Thesis
Ph.D., Accounting -- Drexel University, 2014
Abstract
This paper examines the effects of the IFRS adoption on earnings quality of 1245 Canadian firms. I analyze the effects IFRS adoption on earnings persistence, earnings predictability, persistence of earnings components, cash flow predictability, accruals quality, value relevance, earnings smoothness, conservatism, and timeliness. I find that earnings quality of Canadian firms, on average, improves following the adoption and the improvements are mostly driven not by U.S. adopters but by IFRS adopters, suggesting that IFRS has a positive impact on earnings quality. Partitioning the sample, I find that firms with incentives for transparent reporting have stable earnings quality throughout the sample period whereas firms without such incentives show an improvement in earnings quality following the adoption. I also find that earnings quality declines to a greater degree for firms in extractive/high-litigation-risk industries relative to firms in non-extractive/low-litigation-risk industries. Further analyses reveal that (1) earnings quality seems to deteriorate for firms with intense reliance on fair value accounting after the adoption but not for firms with minimal reliance on fair value accounting, that (2) R&D intensive firms see some weak improvements in earnings quality following the adoption in comparison to non-R&D intensive firms, and that (3) IFRS adoption is associated with a greater improvement in earnings quality for loss firms than for profitable firms. Finally, the effects of IFRS seem unlikely to be uniform across different measures of earnings quality. Taken all together, the findings suggest that standard setters and researchers should probably not consider the effects of IFRS in isolation of firms' reporting incentives and that the SEC, that the Financial Accounting Standards Board's (FASB) concerns about the lack of implementation guidance in extractive and high-litigation-risk industries are warranted, and that fair value accounting is likely to be harmful to earnings quality.
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1860/4572
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