Law, Corporate Governance and Accounting: European Perspectives

The growing internationalization of markets, the relaxation of constraints on capital flows between countries, and the creation of different economic unions -- the European Union in particular -- initiated the flow of capital, goods, and services across national borders, growth and diffusion of shareholding, and increased merger activity among the world's largest stock exchanges. These changes have stimulated an interest in understanding developments in accounting and corporate governance in a newly qualitative way.Two recent occurrences in the world of business have created this interest in examining accounting and corporate governance. First, the corporate scandals in the US and Europe in early 2000's shook the financial community's confidence in the performance of public companies' boards of directors and drew attention to possible flaws in corporate governance practices. Second, the European Parliament passed a resolution requiring all firms listed on stock exchanges of European member states to apply to IFRS when preparing their financial statements, making it necessary to analyze and debate the merits of this adoption, such as its effects on financial statements' properties ' economic performance in particular. The outcome of this research is instrumental in evaluating the corporate governance differences and first outcomes of this accounting convergence for robust policy prescriptions for future regimes.