Effects of the Spanish Accounting Reform on the Economic and Financial Structure, and the Performance of Listed Companies

The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of the 2008 accounting reform on the economic and financial indicators which are commonly used in the financial analysis, as well as analyse whether there is an evolution on these measures as a consequence of a learning process or an adaptation to the accounting reform. Firstly, we do a normative analysis to examine the differences in the Spanish GAAP before and after the accounting reform. Based on the differences we find, we formulate a series of hypotheses about how these differences affect the main measures of economic structure, financial structure, and performance which are commonly used in the analysis of financial statements, as well as their effect on the accruals. These hypotheses are tested with a multivariate analysis in a sample of listed companies. Results show that the accounting reform has effects on the financial indicators