ABSTRACT
When countries have announced plans to adopt IFRS in lieu of the standards that had applied previously, they have referred to a number of benefits, mostly to do with equity markets. So it is not surprising that academics have looked to equity markets to assess the extent to which benefits may have materialised. The evidence they have gathered can fairly be characterised as mixed, partly because of differences in samples and the use of a wide range of proxies for the same underlying but unobservable idea. Nonetheless, it seems relatively clear that the shift to IFRS has had many consequences both for the valuation of equities and for equity markets more generally. Although there will always be winners and losers from changes in accounting standards, if only because of their distributive effects, undoubtedly some consequences are regarded by companies and investors as, on balance, beneficial. However, the story is far from complete. Ample scope remains to expand the range of possible benefits that are investigated and to improve, substantially, the methods used to seek them out.
