Purpose – This paper aims to focus on how forecasts information is disclosed in IPO prospectuses. In France, managers report either detailed forecasts or only a brief summary. Design/methodology/approach – The authors investigate the determinants and consequences of the varying levels of...

Historically, the format of financial statements has varied from one country to another. Recently, due to the attractiveness of their capital markets, the strength of their accounting professions and the influence of their institutional investors, Anglo-American countries have seen the impact of...

Accounting for research and development (R&D) costs is an open issue. SFAS N°2 mandates that all R&D costs are immediately expensed. International standards prescribe a capitalization of R&D costs if they meet certain criteria (IAS 38). Recent research papers (Healy et al., 2002; Lev and...

Purpose – This paper aims to focus on how forecasts information is disclosed in IPO prospectuses. In France, managers report either detailed forecasts or only a brief summary. Design/methodology/approach – The authors investigate the determinants and consequences of the varying levels of...

Very few countries require directors to be financially literate. This article investigates the determinants of boards' financial expertise using a sample of 95 non-financial French listed firms. We construct a measure of financial expertise based on educational and career background data for 943...

We examine whether managers' decisions to capitalize or expense R&D expenditures convey information about the future performance of the firm. Focusing on a French setting where managers can choose to capitalize R&D expenditures under certain circumstances, we find that, after controlling for...