Marcus Bravidor

The Role and Current Status of IFRS in the Completion of National Accounting Rules – Evidence from Austria and Germany

Abstract Austria and Germany share similar accounting traditions. International harmonization in both countries has mainly focused on group accounting. In contrast, single financial statements give rise to legal and tax consequences and, thus, are still tied to the traditional principles of orderly accounting. Recent regulatory changes confirmed this dual role of accounting in both countries, while moving local accounting rules closer to IFRS, although to different extents. We illustrate how recent regulations in the two countries made reference to IFRS, how IFRS was considered during the law-making process and outline major differences that remain between domestic and international accounting standards.

The Financial Burden of Regulation – Exploring Macroeconomic and Institutional Ties with the Demand for Accounting Services

We empirically analyze the determinants of regulatory costs associated with accounting, audit and tax rules in the European Union. Regulatory costs include transfer payments from losers to beneficiaries of such legislation. Hence, building upon a novel dataset, we estimate regulatory costs as the actual revenues earned from accounting, audit and tax advisory services. Potential determinants include governance mechanisms, financing sources as well as country-specific tax and audit requirements. Our results indicate that regulatory cost strongly depend on the economy’s size. However, their share of GDP decreases in larger economies. We find further evidence that large companies bear the majority of regulatory costs. Strong governance and enforcement institutions cannot fully compensate this effect. Competitive income tax systems do not lower regulatory costs, indicating tax advisory as the “price tag” of maximizing tax benefits.

What Determines Time Spent in Peer Reviews? – Evidence from The Accounting Review

The existing empirical literature on the peer review process in general and in accounting in particular has primarily focused on the fairness of the process and reasons for rejections of submitted papers. There is little evidence on the factors which might influence the overall timeliness of peer review. Based on a sample of hand-collected data from 477 articles published in The Accounting Review (TAR) between 1997 and 2009 I investigate the effect of informal feedback, article- and author-specific factors as well as fairness indicators on the duration of the peer review process. The results of my base model suggest that peer review in TAR is not object to external influence. Noticeably, articles which get highly cited after publication, pass the process significantly faster, indicating a certain effectiveness of the process. Collaboration between authors is a more important factor than informal feedback from colleagues, seminars, conferences, etc. In a second analysis I additionally investigate the effect of fairness indicators based on a subsample of articles for which the (accepting) editor is known. If institutional bonds between editor and author(s) exist, the time spent in peer review apparently decreases. This result should be interpreted with caution, as it could simply reflect a self-selection of high quality faculty. The results are robust to different definitions of author-specific attributes and the inclusion of submission year-, method- and topic-fixed effects.