International Accounting in the 21st Century

Despite the recent trend towards accounting homogenisation across countries, there are still substantial differences world-wide in accounting standards. These differences constitute barriers to the efficient allocation of investment, since they act, for all purposes, an informational transaction costs of informational asymmetries. As a consequence, the very process of international financial integration is affected and slowed down. In particular, cross-country differences in accounting regulations affect the behaviour and therefore, the international comparability of accounting-based variables; for example, domestic accounting regulations across the globe differ significantly in the speed of earnings and losses recognition, the intensity of earning smoothing and the accounting and tax treatment of asset revaluation. Thus, two identical companies with exactly the same assets and activities that operated in two countries subject to different accounting standards would present different values of variables such as the book to market ratio, operating earnings, net income, assets, etc. This new important book gathers the latest research from around the world on this topic.