Implikationen der IFRS-Einführung auf die Informationsbasis und Prognosequalität von Finanzanalysten: State of the Art der empirischen Kapitalmarktforschung

In the last decades, more than 120 countries introduced IFRS as their official accounting standards on a voluntary or mandatory base. IFRS aim to increase transparency, comparability and quality of international financial reports in order to ensure investor protection and market efficiency. This global adoption process is accompanied and examined (ex-ante) by a broad number of research studies. One main research stream investigates the intended consequences of IFRS adoption on financial analysts as information intermediaries on capital markets. Financial analysts play a major role in empirical accounting research as they are sophisticated users of financial accounting information while their estimates and recommendations are publicly observable. Thus, this paper focuses on selected studies of this research path. First, it discusses analysts’ decision-making process and develops their conceptual role in IFRS accounting. Second, it reviews empirical literature on the economic consequences of voluntary and mandatory IFRS adoption on analysts’ information environment and forecast accuracy. The findings of empirical work provide some evidence that IFRS adoption has improved the information environment and forecast accuracy. However, due to some limitations, IFRS only seem to converge to their aims and there is still need for further research. The review concludes with avenues and suggestions for future research. © 2015, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, Austria.