The Impact of Early Adoption of IFRS on the Quality of Accounting Information

Abstract

After the various financial scandals, the debate concerning accounting information has been renewed in earnest. Consequently, we have decided to study the quality of accounting information. Indeed the aim of this article, which spans from the period of 2002 to 2006, is to study the impact of early adoption of IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) on the quality of accounting information. After reviewing the literature, we chose to study the following aspects:earnings managment and timely loss recognition. This study deals with as ample of the CAC (Cotation Assistee en Continu: Scoring Assisted Continuous) 40 companies. Panel number one is made up of companies that foresaw the adoption of IFRS. Panel number two consist of companies that waited for the legal date for the adoption of IFRS. After empirical tests, we noticed that for panel number one, the quality of accounting information has improved; while in panel number two, we noticed an increase in earnings managment. In conclusion, not foreseeing the adoption of IFRS hampers the companies and increases earning management.