How to measure financial reporting quality internationally?

The purpose of the study is to propose a system to measure financial reporting quality at country level. The study develops quality indicators of five dimensions of financial reporting system: loss avoidance ratio, profit decline avoidance ratio, accruals ratio, qualified audit opinion ratio and non-Big 4 auditor ratio. The study calculates a financial reporting quality score based on these indicators. The measurement system is applied in 8 Asian-Pacific jurisdictions for the year 2004 and 2005. The results suggest that New Zealand and Australia are among the best financial reporting quality countries in this area, and overall financial reporting quality in the group as a whole was stable during the two year time period