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The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the influence of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption by Russian public companies on the value relevance of financial reporting in Russia.

We selected 67 Russian public companies that reported both under Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) and IFRS for four consecutive years (2006–2009).

The main limitation of the chapter is the sample, but this can be explained by the fact that only 67 companies in Russia report under the two standards (RAS and IFRS). So the sample could not be increased as there were no other companies that fulfilled the characteristics of the sample.

The results obtained show that on the Russian market there is no evidence of increased value relevance of financial reporting to external users of financial information after adopting IFRS when comparing and evaluating the two regimes (RAS and IFRS) unconditionally. Such results can be explained by the notion of mock compliance which originated due to the institutional differences between the RAS and IFRS development environments.

Adoption of IFRS by companies in emerging markets has been a subject of interest for lots of researchers, but this is the first research of its kind in the field of value relevance of adoption of IFRS on the Russian market.

The study aims at reviewing a synthesis of disclosure, transparency, and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) implementation in an attempt to provide directions for future research. Prior research overwhelmingly supports that the IFRS adoption or effective implementation of IFRS will enhance high-quality financial reporting, transparency, enhance the country’s investment environment, and foreign direct investment (FDI) (Dayanandan, Donker, Ivanof, & Karahan, 2016; Gláserová, 2013; Muniandy & Ali, 2012). However, some researchers provide conflicting evidence that developing countries implementing IFRS are probably not going to encounter higher FDI inflows (Gheorghe, 2009; Lasmin, 2012). It has also been argued that the IFRS adoption decreases the management earnings in countries with high levels of financial disclosure. In general, the study indicates that the adoption of IFRS has improved the financial reporting quality. The common law countries have strong rules to protect investors, strict legal enforcement, and high levels of transparency of financial information. From the extensive structured review of literature using the Scopus database tool, the study reviewed 105 articles, and in particular, the topic-related 94 articles were analysed. All 94 articles were retrieved from a range of 59 journals. Most of the articles (77 of 94) were published 2010–2018. The top five journals based on the citations are Journal of Accounting Research (187 citations), Abacus (125 citations), European Accounting Review (107 citations), Journal of Accounting and Economics (78 citations), and Accounting and Business Research (66 citations). The most-cited authors are Daske, Hail, Leuz, and Verdi (2013); Daske and Gebhardt (2006); and Brüggemann, Hitz, and Sellhorn (2013). Surprisingly, 65 of 94 articles did not utilise the theory. In particular, four theories have been used frequently: agency theory (15), economic theory (5), signalling theory (2), and accounting theory (2). The study calls for future research on the theoretical implications and policy-related research on disclosure and transparency which may inform the local and international standard setters.

This study investigates the efficiency of value relevance and faithful representation when stock market price derivates from its firm value to the investigated IT companies listed in FTSE Taiwan 50. The empirical investigation reveals one financial indicators: Return on equity (ROE) has explanatory ability among seven financial indicators, earnings per share (EPS), book value (BV), dividend yield (Div.), price–earnings ratio (P/E), ROE, return on assets (ROA), and return on operating asset (ROOA) to both sampled companies, United Microelectronics Corporation, UMC, (2303) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, TSMC, (2330). Furthermore, the empirical results indicate that the higher order moments, skewness and kurtosis, of price deviation do not provide a reliable prediction or explanatory power for stock price trends.

This chapter focuses on information efficiency as provided by fair value accounting (FVA) and corporate governance (CG) practices in an emerging market. Positive accounting theory was adopted as an empirical model to test the relationship between information efficiency and stock prices. Data for the period 2007–2020 from 576 listed firms on the Stock Exchange of Thailand were collected, tested, and analyzed using a fixed effect estimator. The results indicate that investors in the stock market trust the use of publicized efficient information as provided by FVA and CG practices in making their investment decisions, when FVA and CG proxies were found to significantly influence stock prices. Hence, this evidence implies that information efficiency leads to better firm values in an emerging market.

This study applies social identity theory (SIT) to explore the perceptual differences among various stakeholder groups regarding the relevance of social and environmental accounting (SEA), SEA education and mandatory disclosure of SEA.

The study adopts a mixed method applying a qualitative and quantitative approach. In total, 325 structured questionnaires were analyzed quantitatively, using ANOVA and group comparison methods. Responses from 18 interviews were analyzed qualitatively to provide complementary evidence for the quantitative study.

There were significant differences between various stakeholder groups regarding the relevance of SEA practice and SEA education. Regulators were mostly affected by considerations about the external perception of work quality, followed by financiers. Practitioners and shareholders were influenced by the ability of SEA in its current state to affect actual work quality. This possibly indicates that academic qualifications have marginal effects on predicting considerations about SEA compared to social identity.

This is the first application of SIT to SEA research and contributes to the effort to improve SEA within emerging economies, highlighting that a one-size-fits-all approach may be ineffective.

There are still many different theoretical approaches and practical interpretations about what an integrated report is. Starting from this premise, the overall purpose of this chapter is to critically analyze the relationship between integrated reporting (IR) and social/sustainability disclosure. Indeed, although some scholars considered IR as a tool to improve the sustainability approach of the companies allowing to disclose more relevant social information, others are more critical about the potentiality of IR to improve social disclosure. Therefore, the general research question is: Is there a natural link between IR and social disclosure (true love) or is the IR a practice to “normalize” the social disclosure and accounting (forced marriage)?

In the attempt to provide a preliminary answer to the research question, the chapter analyzes what is the approach of three categories: (1) academics; (2) soft-regulators; and (3) companies. From the methodological point of view, a mixed method of analysis has been adopted.

From the analysis of the three different points of view, IR can be considered as a “contested concept” because of the heterogeneous and sometimes conflicting interpretations and implementation that are done on this type of report. This leads to relevant theoretical and practical implications.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to survey views of bankers in Jordan about the usefulness of fair value accounting and major obstacles facing its implementation in practice.

Methodology/Approach – A structured questionnaire was administered to individuals holding high positions in Jordanian banks. The questionnaire covered the respondents' views about the appropriateness of using fair value accounting, the usefulness of fair value figures in terms of their relevance for decision making and the obstacles facing the application of fair value accounting in practice.

Findings – Results of the survey showed that while there was general approval of the use of fair values in financial reporting, there were some reservations about their relevance in terms of predictive value and, more importantly, feedback value. Major obstacles facing the usefulness of fair values in financial reporting included, according to respondents, (1) the possibility of fraud in fair value reporting, (2) the ambiguity of accounting standards on fair value application and (3) the reliability of figures measured using fair value accounting, as opposed to those measured using historical cost accounting.

Social implications – The paper discusses the positive and negative aspects of application of fair value financial reporting in accounting. It discusses how fair value financial reporting may be useful for decision making of users of financial statements and what obstacles may limit this usefulness. The paper also discusses the implications of the findings for Jordan and other emerging economies, including suggested ways to reduce the possible negative effects of fair value accounting.

Originality/Value of paper – Fair value accounting practice is relatively new to Jordan, and the Jordanian context, as a less-developed country with a low-efficiency stock market, is significantly different to the environments in which fair value accounting practices were established. The effects of applying fair value accounting in Jordanian financial reporting practices are under-researched, so this study yields views on the reliability and relevance of fair value measures and the ease of their application in practice that could be specific to the Jordanian environment and differ significantly from results from developed countries. The findings generally support this argument.

This study looks at the value-relevance of accounting data and measures of web-traffic for Internet firms listed on the Neuer Markt. We show that earnings and cash flows cannot explain the valuation of Internet companies, while we report a positive association between total sales and market capitalisation. In addition, sales and marketing as well as research and development expenses are relevant value-drivers. Furthermore, we find a positive relation between market values and a number of web-metrics such as customer loyalty, reach, page impressions, and unique visitors. We conclude that during the Internet bubble, measures of web-traffic provided at least as much explanatory power for market values as financial statement information.

Part II contrasts the views of materiality in the Conceptual Frameworks of the IASB, FASB, IPSAS, and other framework such as the Integrated Reporting. In particular, it analyzes at what level and how differently that concept interacts with the qualitative characteristics of financial information in each of those frameworks. It looks at its pervasiveness and entity specificity, the interlock with the concept of relevance, reliability and faithful representation, completeness, understandability, neutrality, and drills down to the link to recognition.

This part then compares the definitions of materiality in different standards and contexts, to then draw a taxonomy of materiality and its attributes, such as the subject matter, thecontext of assessment, the addressees, the assessor, and the materiality test. A large part of the analysis involves the comparison between legal definitions of materiality and characterizations in the accounting, financial, and larger management contexts.