Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on earnings quality in a continental European context (i.e. France) more than a decade after their mandatory adoption. Furthermore, the authors investigate whether the IFRS effect depends on firm-specific incentives.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors construct an aggregated measure that considers the main qualitative information characteristics: reliability and relevance. They identify accruals quality, earnings smoothing and the degree of conditional conservatism as attributes of reliability and use earnings persistence, predictability, value relevance and timeliness to measure earnings relevance. To test the hypotheses, the authors use a sample of French listed companies. The analyses are based on ordinary least squares (OLS) fixed effects, the Newey–West estimator and the difference-in-difference approach. The authors also use cluster analysis to identify firms with high incentives for earnings quality.

Findings

The results reveal a decrease in earnings quality that persisted for a decade after IFRS adoption. This decrease is mainly due to a decline in earnings relevance, suggesting that the fair value principle worsened earnings volatility. However, the results show that there is an improvement in earnings reliability after IFRS adoption, suggesting that the international standards were able to constrain managerial opportunism. Additionally, the findings reveal that firm-specific incentives can enhance the positive effect of IFRS, but the incentives are not able to substitute for such effect.

Research limitations/implications

The IFRS effect depends on firm-specific incentives.

Practical implications

The authors prove that firm-specific incentives are important to accentuate the positive effect of IFRS on earnings reliability and to mitigate the impact of IFRS on earnings relevance.

Originality/value

This paper makes several contributions to the literature. First, it addresses the relative lack of attention to the main qualitative characteristics in measuring earnings quality, that is, earnings reliability and earning relevance, and uses an aggregate earnings quality measure. Second, this paper uses a cluster analysis to highlight the role of firm-specific incentives in shaping the effect of IFRS on earnings quality.

中文翻译：

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对IFRS和收益质量的新见解：从法国的经验中得出什么结论？

目的

本研究的目的是在强制采用国际财务报告准则（IFRS）十多年后，在欧洲大陆（即法国）考察国际财务报告准则（IFRS）对收益质量的影响。此外，作者调查了IFRS的效果是否取决于企业特定的激励。

设计/方法/方法

作者构建了一种综合度量，该度量考虑了主要的定性信息特征：可靠性和相关性。他们将应计质量，收益平滑度和有条件的保守程度确定为可靠性的属性，并使用收益持续性，可预测性，价值相关性和及时性来衡量收益相关性。为了检验假设，作者使用了法国上市公司的样本。这些分析基于普通最小二乘（OLS）固定效应，Newey-West估计量和差分差方法。作者还使用聚类分析来确定对收益质量具有高激励作用的公司。

发现

结果表明，采用IFRS后，收益质量持续下降了十年。该下降主要是由于收益相关性下降，这表明公允价值原则加剧了收益波动性。但是，结果表明，采用IFRS后，收益可靠性有所提高，这表明国际标准能够限制管理机会主义。此外，研究结果表明，特定于公司的激励措施可以增强IFRS的积极作用，但是激励措施不能替代这种影响。

研究局限/意义

IFRS的效果取决于公司的具体激励措施。

实际影响

作者证明，特定于公司的激励机制对于强调IFRS对收益可靠性的积极影响以及减轻IFRS对收益相关性的影响很重要。

创意/价值

本文对文献做出了一些贡献。首先，它解决了在衡量盈余质量时相对缺乏对主要定性特征的关注，即盈余可靠性和盈余相关性，并使用了总盈余质量度量。其次，本文使用聚类分析来强调公司特定激励在塑造国际财务报告准则对盈余质量的影响中的作用。