Impact of 2008 Financial Crisis On Earnings Quality :IFRS and US GAAP Differential Case of France and United States

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of 2008 financial crisis in two countries adopting two different accounting and financial systems: France (IFRS) and United States (US GAAP). From two French and American samples of 4030 firm–year observations, we found significant discrepancies between the two countries and within the same country. For French companies, only the persistence was degraded during 2008 and this deterioration mitigated after the year of the crisis. However, the effect of the crisis on the earnings quality of US companies was paradoxical: negative effect on predictability, value relevance and timeliness and positive effect on conservatism and without effects on earnings management. Keywords: