Signalling under Uncertainty: The Case of IFRS Adoption

This paper examines the liquidity, Tobin’s Q, and cost of equity effects from voluntary and mandatory IFRS adoption. In contrast to prior work, we focus on the firm level heterogeneity in the economic consequences, recognising that the level of uncertainty avoidance (UAI) in a country will influence the economic consequences derived from implementing the new standards. Country level uncertainty avoidance is predicted to lead to lower liquidity and Tobin’s Q, and a higher cost of equity for mandatory adopters in higher UAI countries, while higher UAI is expected to benefit voluntary adopters in terms of higher liquidity and Tobin’s Q, and a lower cost of equity. To test these predictions, we partition the firms into non-adopters, voluntary adopters, and mandatory adopters and also classify firms according to the change in their financial reporting quality. We analyse whether capital markets effects are different across the various groups based on the level of uncertainty avoidance in the host country. We find that prior to the mandatory adoption of IFRS by the EU member states, voluntary adopters in higher UAI countries benefited from increased liquidity and Tobin’s Q, compared to identical firms in lower UAI countries, mandatory adopters and non-adopters. However, we find that this result is not persistent post the EU mandate, and that UAI influences both mandatory and voluntary adopters in a similar manner post 2005. The results from the cost of equity analysis suggest that market participants treat mandatory and voluntary adopters in an almost identical manner and that a higher UAI leads to both groups of firms exhibiting a reduction in their cost of equity. Our findings imply that uncertainty avoidance is able to explain part of the heterogeneity exhibited in the capital market outcomes between firms and across countries that have adopted IFRS.