Examining the differences between United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (U.S. GAAP) and International Accounting Standards (IAS): implications for the harmonization of accounting standards

Current trends indicate continued movement towards the harmonization of accounting standards, but not without difficulty and concern. At times, the political and financial market pressure, push the movement in opposite directions. The paper discusses the conceptual framework used in establishing Global Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) (International Accounting Standards, IAS) and U.S. GAAP. Numerous transactional examples are illustrated under both Global GAAP and U.S. GAAP treatment. Several country specific references are presented demonstrating the difficulty in achieving harmonization. Implications for harmonization of accounting standards include arguments “for” and “against” Global GAAP.     

Accounting for government grants: Standard-setting and accounting choice

This paper provides evidence on several matters relating to accounting for government grants under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Focusing on grants related to assets, we trace the development of International Accounting Standard (IAS) 20, outline some of the problems of current accounting practice, and suggest why these have not been addressed by the standard-setter. Then, by hand-collecting data relating to 559 firms from 15 countries, we empirically analyze several issues. We show that asset grants are economically important for some firms and that the frequency of grants is significantly different across the countries. For the non-financial firms in our sample, we identify the grant-related accounting policy choice: a firm can either show the grant as deferred income or net it against the asset. The options are roughly equally popular overall but the firm’s country of domicile is strongly associated with the choice. Further, as a key element of disclosure quality for this topic, we investigate whether or not the balance sheet-related numbers relating to grants are disclosed, finding that many firms do not disclose them. Disclosure quality is better for firms which use the ‘deferred income’ option, and it is also better in countries where a higher proportion of firms has received government grants. International differences and poor disclosure are detrimental to international comparisons, so we conclude that the policy choice should be removed from the accounting standard.     

An alternative three-factor model for international markets: Evidence from the European Monetary Union

In this paper, we construct the three-factor model introduced by Chen et al. (2010) for a European sample covering 10 countries from the European Monetary Union and the period from 1990 to 2006. Two key findings result. First, we show that the properties of the European factors are comparable to those of the US factors. Second, we show that the alternative three-factor model’s explanatory power is either equal or superior to the explanatory power of traditional models when applied to five commonly known stock market anomalies. Our results thus suggest the use of international versions of the Chen et al. (2010) factor model in addition to traditional factor models in international empirical finance research.     

Accounting standards and value relevance of financial statements: An international analysis

Using 17,743 firm-year observations of industrial companies in 21 countries from 1991 to 1997, this paper finds that the use of accrual accounting (versus cash accounting) negatively affects the value relevance of financial statements in countries with weak shareholder protection. This negative effect, however, does not exist in countries with strong shareholder protection. These findings are consistent with the belief that shareholder protection improves the effectiveness of accrual accounting, and suggest the importance of considering shareholder protection when formulating accounting policies related to accruals.     

Effective experimental controls for research in international accounting: Further thoughts

This paper responds to recent research by Ruland et al. [Ruland, W., Shon, J., Zhou, P., 2007. Effective controls for research in international accounting. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 26(1), 96–116.] that addresses the effectiveness of experimental controls for research in international accounting, with focus on Ndubizu and Sanchez [Ndubizu, G.A., Sanchez, M.H., 2006. The valuation properties of earnings and book value prepared under US GAAP in Chile and IAS in Peru. Journal of Accounting and Public Policy 25 (2)]. We attempt to remove some misconceptions about effective experimental controls that have surfaced in the debate. We argue that theory and refined proxies alleviate many of the control issues that have surfaced in the literature.     

Offering a globally-linked international accounting course in real time: a sharing of experiences and lessons learned

This article reports the experiences from offering an online international accounting course that involved students from Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the USA participating in real time via both audio and video links. In addition to interacting among themselves, students also interacted with accounting practitioners and standard setters from these countries. The latter attended class either in person or “virtually” via audio and video links. The paper also discusses the major benefits from the course, as identified by student feedback and direct faculty observations. A number of challenges in offering a course of this type also are identified. These insights can assist accounting educators interested in implementing a similar international accounting course at their institutions. They also have implications for applying distance-learning approaches in courses with a domestic focus.     

Tangibility and investment irreversibility in asset pricing

Zhang (2005) and Cooper (2006) provide a theoretical risk‐based explanation for the value premium by suggesting a nexus between firms’ book‐to‐market ratio and investment irreversibility. They argue that unproductive physical capacity is costly in contracting conditions but provides growth opportunities during economic expansions, resulting in covariant risk between firms’ investment in tangible assets and market‐wide returns. This article uses the Australian accounting environment to empirically test this theory – a test that is not possible using US data. Consistent with the theoretical argument, tangibility is priced in equity returns, and augmenting the Fama and French three‐factor model with a tangibility factor increases model explanatory power.     

Developments in accounting regulation: A synthesis and annotated bibliography of evidence and commentary in the 2016 academic literature

In this paper key regulation-related findings and commentaries in the 2016 academic literature are synthesized in annotated form. This paper is one in a series of previously published annotated bibliographies published in this journal. Papers published in academic outlets including The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Contemporary Accounting Research, Accounting Horizons, The Journal of Accounting, Auditing & Finance, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Journal of Business, Finance & Accounting, The Journal of Financial Reporting, Auditing A Journal of Practice and Theory, and Research in Accounting Regulation were reviewed for potential inclusion. The 2016 literature featured strong regulation-related threads as follows: financial accounting regulation, analysis of individual pronouncements, SEC regulatory activity and its impact, international financial reporting standards, income tax reporting, and auditing.     

Goal‐efficacy framework: an examination of domestic and international accounting students' academic performance

This study considers the psychological influences on academic performance using a goal‐efficacy framework. Data were gathered using a survey questionnaire (N = 375). The paper is motivated by a repeated high failure rate for a second‐year core accounting unit and anecdotal evidence that international students perform poorly in comparison with domestic students. The results demonstrate the role of self‐regulated learning strategy as a mediating variable for goal orientation and academic performance. While the analyses suggest no significant differences between domestic and international students with respect to the main psychological variables and academic performance, further analyses reveal that four specific factors of the main psychological variables are significantly different between domestic and international students.     

The impacts of inventory in transfer pricing and net income: Differences between traditional accounting and throughput accounting

This research proposes the Theory of Constraints (TOC) throughput accounting (TA) as an alternative management control mechanism in an international transfer pricing setting. We compare TA with the traditional accounting method and demonstrate that the traditional method underestimate factors as demand variation and inventories, which affects decisions, such as moving production to an offshore plant. A detailed system dynamics model is built to simulate the production process in an offshore supply chain to compare the methods. The study aims to fill a gap in the management accounting studies and contribute to the understanding of international transfer pricing and their management controls, exploring more than just the tax savings, which are usually considered isolated from operational factors for supply chain (SC) offshoring decisions. Furthermore, we conduct a brief literature review, present the model and discuss the results. It has been observed that inventory levels are an important part of accounting, offshored supply chains, and transfer pricing. Traditional cost and accounting methods favour higher inventory levels, and they can overestimate net income results up to 70% – especially in higher demand variation scenarios – when compared to the throughput accounting.     

Interaction between tax and accounting practice: Accounting for stock-in-trade

This paper studies the issue of interaction between tax and accounting practice through an examination of the process followed by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) when formulating Recommendation on Accounting Principles (RoAP) No. 22 as a replacement for RoAP No. 10. We show that the ICAEW had a clear intention of persuading the Board of Inland Revenue of the legitimacy of replacement cost as a basis of stock valuation, and that the preparation and publication of RoAP 22 succeeded, to a significant extent, in achieving that outcome. We also reveal that RoAP 22 appears to have affected the way in which some companies valued their stock and how their bases of stock valuation were disclosed in corporate published accounts.     

Pacific Basin stock markets and international capital asset pricing

In this paper, we follow Harvey (1991) to investigate whether rates of return on Pacific Basin stock markets can be explained by conditional version of International Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM), which allows for time-varying expected returns, variances, and covariances. The results show that most individual Pacific Basin markets can be described by the conditional ICAPM. However, the multiple markets' tests do not support the conditional ICAPM formulation, and the estimates of world reward to risk ratio are not the same across these markets. Furthermore, the Ghysels and Hall test (Ghysels & Hall, 1990a, 1990b) shows that the estimates of parameter are also unstable in the conditional ICAPM formulation. This implies that it is difficult to use world return to describe the relationship between expected return and risk for the Pacific Basin stock markets.     

The contract,accounting and trust: A case study of an international joint venture (IJV) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)

This paper reports on the results of a case study that examines the effect of the contract and accounting on inter-organisational trust in an international joint venture (IJV). The empirical setting of the research was an IJV relation between a United Arab Emirates (UAE) firm and its western partner. Data were gathered from multiple sources, including documents, observations, interviews and discussions with managers. The paper aims to explore the process of trust development and the role of the contract and accounting in this. We find that trust developed differently for the partners. Moreover the trust concerns of the partners were not the same. Based on this we conclude that trust was not automatically reciprocated. Instead it needs relating to other items such as the contract, accounting and also the institutional environment. The open-book accounting we observed could only be termed ‘partial’ because the western partner had access to the local partner's books but not the vice versa. But this partial open-book accounting created conflicts between the partners. We argue that developing one kind of trust through one particular medium may help one party but may damage the relationship between the partners.