Effects of IFRS on accounting information quality : evidence for Brazil

Abstract

Understanding the effects of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on accounting quality is fundamental for policy makers and financial market players in general. This paper analyzes whether the adoption of IFRS in Brazil has had the impact on accounting informational quality. To this end, a differentiated empirical strategy was adopted based on two steps: first, a matching of voluntary adopters of norms and non-adopters by propensity score is performed to construct control groups. This is important to mitigate the selection bias problem. Second, the measures of value relevance, timeliness and conservatism of accounting information are estimated using panel data models. The period of analysis extends from 2006 to 2010, with annual information for the first stage and quarterly for the second. The results show a positive impact of international standards on the value relevance. However, for the measures of timeliness and conservatism, sufficient evidence was not found to indicate any impact on the group of companies evaluated.