دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی محتوای اطلاعاتی استاندارد گزارشگری مالی بین المللی در مقابل صورت مالی GAAP - امرالد 2017

Structured Abstract

Purpose: We seek to determine whether financial statement users suffered a significant loss of information when, in November, 2007, the SEC dropped the requirement for foreign private issuers using IFRS (“IFRS firms”) to reconcile their financial statements to U.S. GAAP. Design/methodology/approach: We investigate whether analyst forecast errors and forecast dispersion increased for IFRS firms to a greater extent than for U.S. GAAP firms after the SEC dropped the reconciliation requirement. Using a treatment group comprised of IFRS firms and a matched sample of U.S. GAAP firms, we employ regression analyses to compare forecast errors and dispersion for the last fiscal year the reconciliation was available and the first fiscal year during which the reconciliation was unavailable to analysts. Findings: We find evidence that forecast errors for IFRS firms exhibited no systematic change after the reconciliation was no longer available for analysts covering those firms. Thus, it does not appear that dropping the reconciliation requirement was associated with a change in forecast accuracy. However, we do find evidence of increased dispersion in the IFRS firms’ forecasts relative to their U.S. GAAP counterparts after the reconciliation requirement was dropped. Practical implications: These findings have implications for evaluating the SEC’s 2007 decision to eliminate the reconciliation for IFRS firms. Specifically, the SEC’s decision does not appear to have significantly altered analysts’ information environments. Originality/value of paper: Our paper contributes to the understanding of how a group of sophisticated financial statement users adapt to different sets of accounting standards.

V. CONCLUSION

Our study indicates that analyst forecast accuracy for IFRS firms did not suffer as a result of the SEC’s removal of the requirement that those firms reconcile their financial statements to GAAP. Based on this finding, it does not appear that the IFRS-to-GAAP reconciliation contained information that analysts could not at least replace with other information sources. This result might be attributable to GAAP and IFRS standards converging over time (see discussion by Tsakumis et al., 2009; and Henry et al., 2009). Clearly, the SEC believes investors are well enough informed about the remaining differences between IFRS and U.S. GAAP to eliminate information previously available in the 20-F reconciliation.

Our analysis of forecast dispersion suggests a slightly different conclusion. In our sample, analysts’ forecast dispersion for IFRS firms increased more than forecast dispersion for GAAP firms. Thus, dropping the IFRS-to-GAAP reconciliation might have resulted in a loss of information that was associated with increased uncertainty (i.e. decreased agreement among analysts) about IFRS firms’ earnings prospects.

However, moving back to our forecast accuracy results, it would seem that the impact of this information loss was minimal in that analysts, as a group, were still able to produce forecasts that were no less accurate for IFRS firms. Overall, it would seem that some information loss might have occurred as a result of the removal of the reconciliation, but that the loss was less substantial than might have been expected. Taken as a whole, our results support previous studies that find the removal of the IFRS-GAAP reconciliation was not terribly consequential. Our results imply that the SEC’s decision to eliminate the reconciliation requirement for IFRS firms likely allowed those firms to save costs related to preparing the reconciliation as well as associated audit fees without substantial information loss. These results further suggest that convergence of IFRS and GAAP, which now seems very unlikely, is less important than previously thought, as markets are able to use information produced under both regimes to forecast future results.