Determinants of de jure adoption of international financial reporting standards: a review

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to systematically review extant studies on what makes a country fully, partially or not adopt international financial reporting standards (IFRS) and categorize these factors into meaningful categories. In so doing, this study facilitates policy-making for accounting and economic standard setters and also points out conflicting viewpoints in the current literature, thus, opportunities for future research. Design/methodology/approach This paper is a literature review on academic studies that examine factors influencing national adoption of IFRS. The reviewed articles are limited to published, peer-reviewed papers only. Findings Overall, the review suggests that although a wide range of determinants on national adoption of IFRS has been identified, prior literature consists of conflicting viewpoints on what influence national accounting policies toward IFRS, thus, highlighting areas in which there are needs for future research. Research limitations/implications First, this study focuses only on the de jure adoption of IFRS. Second, the study focuses mainly on research findings, not theory use in the extant literature. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study, which provides a comprehensive review of studies on de jure IFRS adoption.