Empirical Study on International Accounting Standards and Accounting Quality

This study explores the historical development of international accounting standards (IAS) and the initiatives of the prominent organizations involved in international standard setting. It also explains why countries differ in national standards, why the process of harmonization of standards among countries has been slow, and why countries should now converge their accounting standards. Many papers on IAS generally deal with the contents of the individual standards. This writer, however, believes that accountants, as social scientists, are also interested in tracing the development of social forms over time and comparing those developmental processes across cultures. Thus, this paper addresses the interest of accountants to learn how some contemporary events or institutions—like the IAS—came into being. In like manner, accountants are interested in finding out the varied reasons why the issue of coming up with a global set of accounting standards has taken a long while. Indeed, these are perspectives that substantially differ from those commonly presented in professional forum and scholarly exercises.