IFRS adoption and value relevance of accounting information in the V4 region

The article compares the value relevance of information contained in financial statements, namely earnings, operating cash flows and book value of equity, in the V4 countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia). Using a dataset of 604 firm-year observations for the period 2005-2017, we identify higher value relevance of accounting information in the Czech and Hungarian capital markets than in Poland. The financial statements of the Slovak listed firms are found not to present value relevant information. The most relevant metric on the Prague and Budapest stock exchanges are earnings. For the Czech Republic and Poland, we find that investors value between-period changes more than absolute amounts for the period. Finally, the Czech and Hungarian markets exhibit a considerable improvement in value relevance of accounting information approximately five years after adopting the IFRS.