In 1973, leading professional accountancy bodies from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States of America established the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) in a bid to confront the problems of international accounting diversities. In addition to the efforts of the IASC, various other bodies such as the United Nations, the European Community, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, have at various times also attempted to address this problem. Against this background, the first main objective of this study is to assess the extent to which the accounting measurement and associated disclosure practices of five leading countries, namely: France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the USA differ in spite of the major efforts made so far to reduce or eliminate diversities in the accounting practices of different countries. The second main objective of this study is to ascertain the extent to which the accounting measurement and associated disclosure practices of multi-listed and domestic listed companies from these five countries differ. This is interesting in view of the argument that globalisation and internationalisation of capital markets provide a justification for global accounting harmonisation.In order to accomplish the study objectives, the financial statements of 413 large listed companies from France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the USA for the 1990/91 financial year and 293 large listed companies for 1970/71 financial year were surveyed to ascertain the extent to which there were significant diversities between the accounting measurement and associated disclosure practices of companies from the five countries before (1970/71) and after (1990/91).
