| Since 1 January 2005, the European Union has mandated the implementation of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for the preparation of consolidated financial statements of its listed companies. Therefore, recent accounting research suggested that the use of IFRS leads to a high quality financial reporting which is characterized by its transparency.;This thesis focuses on the analysis of the economic impact of the mandatory adoption of IFRS on companies, investors and creditors. Lying in the perspective of the positive accounting theory, our research is based on the new conceptual framework of financial reporting of the IASB (2010), especially in paragraph OB2, which designates investors and creditors as the main users of financial information, and QC 38, which assesses whether the benefits of financial information justifies the associated costs for its production and use. For this, we rely on a sample of 2 926 European companies operating in eight countries which adopted IFRS from 1 January 2005. Our study covers the period from 2002 to 2007 and is based on three empirical specific models to each stakeholder to the financial reporting process. Economic benefits are measured respectively by the cost of capital for companies, the quality of accounting earnings for investors and the credit rating for bank creditors.;In the first stage of our analysis, we test the general assumption that the mandatory adoption of IFRS does not generate any economic benefit to the preparers of financial information, investors or creditors. Our results suggest that the firms'cost of capital declines when comparing data before and after January 1, 2005, and an improved credit rating for creditors is noticed. For investors, we do not notice any difference statistically significant at the quality of accounting earnings level.;In a second step, we test three other research hypotheses to detect the possible influence of firm characteristics such as asymmetric information, financial dependence and ownership structure of family type on the results of the general hypothesis. Thus we note that it is only the third specific model for creditors that delivers results which respectively support the information asymmetry and financial dependency hypotheses. In simple terms, we conclude that it is the creditors who benefit most from the mandatory adoption of IFRS, followed by preparers of financial information.;We conclude that for investors, the market anticipates the content of accounting data and the mandatory adoption of IFRS has no economic impact on them. In addition, our results support the fact that they have to be considered as part of main users of financial information in accordance with the recent IASB framework of financial information. |
