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The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the association between the adoption of international accounting standards (IAS/IFRS) and the performance of emerging capital markets.

Data related to 31 developing countries with capital markets were used. The authors performed univariate analyses (means comparison before and after the use of IAS/IFRS), as well as multivariate analyses (estimation of models of panel data), to test the hypothetical relations set up in the paper.

The results suggest that the performance of emerging capital markets is significantly and positively associated with IAS/IFRS use. They are consistent with several empirical investigations which highlighted the relevance of financial information under IAS/IFRS in emerging capital markets.

Several organizations and decision-makers including the IASB, governments, capital markets regulators and international investors should find the policy implications of this paper very meaningful.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the relationship between the use of IAS/IFRS and the performance of emerging capital markets based on a group of countries has not yet been explored.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between voluntary disclosure of intangibles and financial analysts’ earnings forecasts properties.

Disclosures about intangible assets were hand-collected through content analysis of annual reports of a sample of US non-financial firms, while analysts’ earnings forecasts properties were collected from Bloomberg Professional database. The authors relied on correlation and multivariate regression analyses to test the research hypotheses.

The results show that increased intangible disclosures affect analysts’ earnings forecasts accuracy, dispersion, and favourable consensus recommendations. However, this effect varies according to the nature of intangible assets.

The results may be of interest to different market participants such as corporate managers, financial analysts, and standards setting bodies that recently published guidelines on voluntary disclosure of intangibles.

This study develops a new comprehensive index to measure the content of narrative disclosures about a large number of intangibles, such as human, structural, and relational assets. The findings contribute to the current debate on the value-relevance of narrative disclosures on intangibles to investors and financial analysts.

This paper aims to investigate the attributes and information content of risk reporting in two different institutional and regulatory, namely, Canadian and German, settings during the period surrounding the financial crisis of 2008.

For a matched sample of manufacturing firms in the period 2006–2010, this study conducts a detailed content analysis of annual reports to assess and compare the volume and patterns of risk disclosures. Panel regressions are used to explore how risk disclosures related to corporate risk proxies and performance indicators.

Over the sample period, Canadian and German firms increase the volume but largely maintain the patterns of risk disclosures. Risk disclosures relate to corporate risk proxies but are not incrementally informative to assess firm performance.

The paper contributes to research on risk reporting by providing detailed cross-country evidence for a period particularly shaped by significant risk. The findings have implications for the regulation and usefulness of risk reporting.

This paper aims to examine the impact of culture on accounting conservatism during transition to international standards.

The sample used in this analysis consists of 15 countries of the European Union that have adopted International financial reporting standards (IFRS) pursuing Regulation N° 1606/2002. The study covers the 2000-2010 period. Two conservatism measures are used, the Basu (1997) measure to account for conditional conservatism and the accruals measure to account for unconditional conservatism. To test the impact of culture, the six dimensions of Hofstede (1980, 2010) are used.

The results of the analysis show that variation of conditional conservatism is influenced by the six cultural dimensions. However, unconditional conservatism is only affected by power distance.

The results of the study are interesting and provide a better understanding of the adoption of IFRS worldwide. The role of culture in explaining accounting practices after adopting a single set of accounting standards is particularly highlighted.

Human resources are considered the most important component of a corporation's competitive advantage in global markets. Society, workers and shareholders expect corporations to manage and utilise human resources not only for the competitive advantage of a corporation but of a nation. Corporations are expected to disclose information relating to the management of human resources in their annual reports. This study analysed the annual reports of a sample of publicly traded corporations in six countries (USA, Canada, Germany, UK, Japan, and S. Korea) for the purpose of an international comparison of human resource information disclosure. Results of the analysis revealed that corporations in different countries differed in the disclosure of human resources information. In particular, those in Europe disclosed more human resources information than those in Asia and North America. The corporations in the financial services sector, which employed over two thirds of the workforce in the developed countries were also different from those in the manufacturing sector in disclosure of human resources information. The details of the differences between the two sectors, and among the six nations of the three continents, in terms of the incidence (frequency) and the word count (content) of information disclosed on different hitman resources issues in the annual reports are presented in the paper.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between financial statement informativeness (FSI) and intellectual capital disclosure (ICD).

While FSI was measured as the explanatory power of financial information in explaining market value, ICD was collected through content analysis of annual reports. A sample of 126 US companies, divided into two groups – high-tech and low-tech companies – were used in this study. Empirical analysis was carried out using the Poisson regression method.

The results show a negative (substitutive) relationship between FSI and ICD, especially in high-tech companies. This indicates that companies with low FSI disclose more information about their IC in annual reports.

This study confirms the role of voluntary ICD as a solution towards mitigating the problem of the distortion of financial information due to the lack of accounting recognition of IC as an asset in the financial statements.

This is the first empirical study to analyse the relationship between FSI and ICD. Therefore, it serves as feedback to the regulators and standard-setters that recently published recommendations on voluntarily disclosing IC.

This study examines the social responsibility information disclosed through mass media vehicles by Canadian companies operating in the banking and petroleum industries. The analysis compares disclosures, made through mass media vehicles such as magazine, radio and television advertisements and company brochures, with those made through the company′s annual reports. Results indicated that the mass media vehicles were used extensively, but that they provided less information in the quantitative and monetary form than did the annual reports. In addition, information provided through the mass media vehicles dealt with only a few information categories. Comparison across the firms by industry indicated that there was a large interfirm difference in the usage of these media for making social disclosure. It is, therefore, felt that annual reports alone perhaps do not adequately represent the information disclosure activities of a firm or an industry.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of value added (VA) as an indicator of intellectual capital (IC), and its impact on the firm's economic, financial and stock market performance.

The value added intellectual coefficient (VAIC™) method is used on 300 UK companies divided into three groups of industries: high‐tech, traditional and services. Data require to calculate VAIC™ method are obtained from the “Value Added Scoreboard” provided by the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Empirical analysis is conducted using correlation and linear multiple regression analysis.

The results show that companies' IC has a positive impact on economic and financial performance. However, the association between IC and stock market performance is only significant for high‐tech industries. The results also indicate that capital employed remains a major determinant of financial and stock market performance although it has a negative impact on economic performance.

The VAIC™ method could be an important tool for many decision makers to integrate IC in their decision process.

This is the first research which has used the data on VA recently calculated and published by the UK DTI in the “Value Added Scoreboard”. This paper constitutes therefore a kind of validation of the ministry data.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the consequences of using international accounting standards (IAS/IFRS) for the development of capital markets located in developing countries (emerging capital markets).

The authors conduct an empirical study using a sample of 38 developing countries with capital markets, starting by comparing the means of the different measures studied before and after the use of IAS/IFRS. A multivariate statistical analysis is conducted based on the estimation of a model of panel data with fixed effects.

The results show that the development of the emerging capital markets is positively and significantly associated with the use of international accounting standards.

The paper's findings are of interest to several different parties, primarily the national accounting standardization body, the IASB, many international organizations and international investors.

The paper describes an empirical study, conducted on a group of developing countries, which provides a better understanding of the potential consequences of the use of IASB standards. The paper is also a meaningful contribution to the international accounting literature, as it examines an interesting subject that has not yet been investigated.

Purpose – This study examines country-level attributes that impact on Corporate Governance Disclosure (CGD) depending on the emerging market country's legal system.

Methodology/approach – We evaluate CGD level using 749 annual reports (year ended 2006) in 57 emerging market countries. We develop a CGD determinants model that compares differences in country level attributes between common law and civil law emerging market countries. Our model builds on a multiple regression and assumes interaction between the origin of the legal system and country-specific attributes.

Findings – Common law emerging markets have substantially higher levels of CGD than civil law ones. CGD is positively associated with the size of the capital market for the entire sample of emerging markets and for the sub-samples of common law and civil law countries. Law enforcement also has a strong positive influence on CGD in common law emerging countries, whereas it has no influence on CGD in civil law emerging countries.

Practical implications – Providing CGD levels for emerging markets helps to a better understanding of the corporate governance characteristics that prevail in each country. Decision makers (international investors, market authorities, standard setters, etc.) should be aware of how country level attributes may interact with the legal system (common law or civil law) to influence CGD.

Originality of the paper – This is one of the few papers to present evidence of the impact of country level attributes on CGD. This study contributes to identifying the attributes that influence CGD with reference to common law and civil law emerging markets.