Country Effects and Sector Effects on the Harmonization of Accounting Policy Choice

This study assesses the extent of accounting harmony in Europe prior to the recent switch to IFRS, by presuming that accounting is harmonized when ‘all firms operating in similar circumstances adopt the same accounting treatment for similar transactions regardless of their domicile’. The policies studied concern inventory, depreciation and goodwill, and the odds of using alternative accounting methods are predicted by logistic regression. The empirical results suggest that, while international exposure and firm size are significant factors, country effects are considerably greater than sector effects, which is inconsistent with harmonized accounting.