We revisit evidence whether incentives or IFRS drive earnings quality changes, analyzing a large sample of German firms in the period from 1998 to 2008. Consistent with previous studies we find that voluntary and mandatory adopters differ distinctively in terms of essential firm characteristics...

The mandatory adoption of IFRS by many countries worldwide fuels the expectation that financial accounting information might become more comparable across countries. This expectation is opposed to an alternative view that stresses the importance of incentives in shaping accounting information....

We examine the subsidiary- and group-level determinants of IFRS adoption by unlisted UK firms. Many unlisted firms are part of large conglomerate groups. For these firms, decisions about reporting practices are expected to be made at the group-level. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that...