An ever closer union: An investigation of accounting measurement and timing in the European Union

This paper explores whether the implementation of a unified set of accounting standards, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is able to overcome prior reporting behaviors by using multiple measures of accounting conservatism, both conditional and unconditional, to proxy for changes in accounting outcomes. Conservatism makes a good proxy for changes in accounting outcomes because it is used as a mechanism to protect key stakeholders and the level of conservatism differs in an international context (Gray, 1988). Countries from different legal systems have different institutional structures and different reporting incentives. Therefore, the sample is bifurcated and regressions are also run based on legal system classifications. I find that accounting conservatism differs by country classification before and after IFRS, but the difference between classifications decrease after the implementation of IFRS. However, IFRS is not the only thing driving this change in behavior. The Market Abuse Directive, a stricter enforcement mechanism in the European Union, has also been instrumental in affecting observable differences in reporting behavior