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This paper investigates to what extent public sector entities (PSEs) in developing countries (DCs) are compliant with IPSAS and examines the impact of the socioeconomic and politico-administrative environment on this compliance during the period 2015–2018.

This research develops a self-constructed checklist consisting of 116 disclosure items from five accrual-based IPSAS (IPSASs, 1, 2, 3, 14 and 24) and applies panel regressions for a sample of 500 entity-year observations of 125 PSEs.

The study results show a high level of disparity in the degree of compliance with IPSAS amongst DCs' governments, with an overall average level of 61%. They reveal that compliance with IPSAS is positively influenced by the level of citizen wealth, government political culture (degree of government openness) and the quality of public administration, whereas jurisdiction size, government financial condition and political competition are non-significant factors.

This research provides researchers and practitioners with a comprehensive framework for understanding the extent of New Public Management reforms in DCs with a focus on International Public Sector Accounting Standards implementation. It might assist policymakers in their accounting strategies and might be a signal for DCs with low compliance to tap lessons from governments with successful experience of IPSAS adoption.

Focusing on DCs' context, this paper brings new insights into the analysis of socioeconomic and politico-administrative incentives for government compliance with IPSAS. It is the first to investigate the impact of citizen wealth and political competition on IPSAS disclosures.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent of central government financial information disclosed in accordance with accrual-based International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) and to investigate the environmental factors affecting this level, drawing on the contingency theory framework.

This study uses a self-constructed checklist of 116 items to measure the IPSAS disclosure level by 100 public sector entities from different countries across the globe during the period 2015–2017. Panel regressions have been used.

The results show significant differences in compliance levels with IPSAS disclosures across nations. They reveal a positive influence of the degree of government openness (political culture), quality of public administration and management and prior experience with International Accounting Standards (IAS)/International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in the public sector on this level, whereas government financial condition is a nonsignificant factor.

The research findings are potentially relevant to academics, researchers, practitioners, standard-setters and government policymakers. By examining the influencing factors of IPSAS disclosure level, this paper paves the way for further investigation of this topic with a more extensive set of micro and macroeconomic variables whether at the central or local government level in other jurisdictions

This study provides new insights into the assessment of the transparency and completeness of government accrual-based financial statements. Based on the contingency theory, this paper is the first to empirically investigate the factors affecting the level of disclosure under accrual-based IPSAS by central government entities in a cross-country analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the transparency and completeness of government financial reporting in sub-Saharan African countries by assessing the extent of compliance with IPSAS disclosures and to investigate the impact of the strength of public management systems (SPMS) and accounting education on this level.

This research develops a self-constructed disclosure index from content analysis and applies panel regressions for a sample of 60 sub-Saharan African government entities during the period 2014–2017.

The study results indicate that IPSAS disclosure levels significantly vary across sub-Saharan African governments. They reveal a positive effect of the SPMS and accounting education on the extent of compliance with IPSAS in this region.

The study findings are of interest to practitioners, researchers, government policy makers, supervisory authorities and professional bodies. By focusing on the effect of the SPMS and accounting education on IPSAS disclosure level, this paper leaves room for future research to investigate other relevant factors associated with the compliance with these standards whether in sub-Saharan Africa or in other parts of the world.

This paper gives new insights into the assessment of the quality and transparency of government financial reporting in sub-Saharan Africa by examining the extent of compliance with IPSAS in this region. It is the first to investigate the impact of the SPMS and accounting education on this level.

The primary objective of this paper is to investigate the relation between the joint provision of sustainability assurance and the readability of sustainability assurance statements. Additionally, it explores whether the presence of a female assurance partner influences the relation between the joint provision of sustainability assurance and the readability of sustainability assurance statements.

We analyzed a dataset comprising 882 firm-year observations from companies operating in sustainability sensitive industries for the period that spans the years 2016–2018.

The research indicates that joint sustainability assurance provision is associated with a more readable sustainability assurance statement, consistent with the “four-eyes” principle. Furthermore, the presence of a female assurance provider influences the joint assurance provision’s impact on sustainability assurance statement readability. Collectively, these results remain robust as they hold unchanged after controlling for endogeneity concerns.

This study provides novel insights into the recent sustainability assurance literature, being the first to examine joint assurance provision, assurance partner gender and sustainability assurance statement readability.

This study has the potential to catalyze regulatory and policy initiatives by providing compelling evidence in favor of mandating joint audits within the area of sustainability assurance practices. Additionally, this research contributes to the ongoing discussion about gender diversity in accounting and nonaccounting assurance firms, providing evidence of the positive impact of female assurance partners on sustainability assurance statement readability.

The regression results provide preliminary evidence on how the presence of a female audit partner influences the relationship between the sustainability assurance joint provision and sustainability assurance statement readability, an issue that has not been examined before.

This research study aims to examine the effect of the compliance with the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) standards on the performance of Islamic banks.

The sample consists of 628 bank-year observations from eight countries that adopt the AAOIFI standards during the period 2009–2020.

The findings reveal a significant positive relationship between the overall compliance level with AAOIFI standards and the two performance measures in Islamic banks.

The findings are useful for various groups of preparers and users of Islamic banks’ annual reports, such as academics and researchers, accountants, management of Islamic banks and national and international organizations.

This research provides new empirical evidence on the effect of compliance with AAOIFI standards (accounting and governance) on Islamic banks performance. In addition, the findings reveal that the examination of compliance level should not be restricted to an overall compliance index that contains all the AAOIFI standards, but should rather take into consideration the different types of these standards (accounting and governance).

This paper aims to examine the impact of the auditor's characteristics on bank's earnings management (EM) through loan loss provisions (LLP) for African banks.

This study is based on 360 bank-year observations from 14 African countries for the period 2011–2016, discretionary LLP is used as proxy for EM. Panel regressions have been conducted.

The authors' findings reveal that auditor's industry specialization and tenure exert a negative and significant influence on the extent of LLP-based EM. The results also show that total fees paid to the banks' auditors are positively related to the extent of EM. In a further analysis, the authors find that industry specialist auditors are more effective in reducing the incoming-increasing. Similarly, the positive relationship previously found between EM and total fees still holds only for income-increasing. Moreover, auditor tenure negatively impacts both income-increasing and income-decreasing EM. As for auditor change, results reveal differential effect on EM.

The current research extends prior literature and provides an understanding of an important external monitoring mechanism, the external audit, within African banks. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is a paucity of cross-country studies that has addressed the influence of auditors' attributes on banks' EM in Africa.

This study aims to examine the relationship between the individual auditor’s industry specialization and the audit report lag (hereafter ARD). Further, it explores whether changing in the audit reporting requirement (i.e. the adoption of ISA701) influences the auditor’s industry specialization effect on the ARD.

A large data set of companies listed on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm over the period 2010–2019 has been analyzed. Least squares regressions have been estimated to provide empirical evidence for the researched hypotheses.

The research findings indicate that the ARD is shorter for client firms audited by an industry specialist audit partner. Testing for the moderating role of changing in the auditing reporting regulation on the relation between the audit partner’s industry specialization and the ARD, the authors reveal that all client firms (except client firms with industry specialist audit partners) experienced an increase in the ARD. Overall, the baseline regression findings are found to be robust to the endogenous auditor choice and multiple measures of both the ARD and the auditor’s industry specialization.

This paper provides novel evidence on the relationship between the audit reporting lag and industry specialization from the individual auditor perspective, an issue that has hitherto been unexplored. The regression results further contribute to the upsurge debate about the consequences of changing in the audit reporting model by providing consistent support for the importance of industry specialization of the audit partner in minimizing costs derived from the former requirement.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of specific Islamic banks’ (IBs) corporate governance (CG) mechanisms on compliance with the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions’ (AAOIFI) governance standards (GSs) disclosure requirements.

Using an unweighted governance compliance index, the authors measure the extent of IBs’ compliance with 7 AAOIFI GSs’ disclosure requirements over the period 2009–2015 (372 bank-year observations). In addition, a multivariate regression analysis was used to test the four hypotheses.

This study’s results report substantial non-compliance (the mean of compliance level with AAOIFI’s GSs over the covered years for the entire sampled IBs is 52.1%). The findings reveal that the Shariah Supervisory Board’s (SSB) remuneration, SSB’s members with only industry expertise, SSB’s members with the combined industry expertise and accounting and financial expertise, the existence of internal Shariah Auditing Department and the level of investment accounts holders’ funds are positively associated with the level of compliance with AAOIFI’s GSs.

The existing studies focusing on the determinants of compliance with AAOIFI’s standards are in the early research stage, as to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is a paucity of empirical research testing this issue. The authors extend these studies by examining all the AAOIFI’s GSs and focusing on the specific IBs’ CG mechanisms. Furthermore, a major contribution of this study is the examination of the relationship between some SSB’s characteristics and compliance level. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research that has examined the effect of the SSB’s remuneration and expertise on compliance level.

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between two corporate governance (CG) mechanisms, namely, the board of directors and the audit committee (AC) and the compliance level with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) mandatory disclosure requirements across 12 African countries.

This paper uses a self-constructed checklist of 140 items to measure the compliance with IFRS mandatory disclosure requirements (here after, COMP) of 202 non-financial listed firms during the 2012–2016 period. This paper applies panel regressions.

The findings reveal that CG mechanisms play an important role in enhancing compliance with IFRS in the African context. The results show that board independence, AC independence and the number of meetings held by the AC are positively associated with COMP. Regarding expertize, this paper find that AC industry expertise along with accounting financial expertise is associated with a higher level of COMP than accounting financial expertize alone. These results show the importance of the CG mechanisms to enforce African companies to fully comply with IFRS required disclosures.

The findings should give a signal to supervisory authorities that more effort is necessary to enforce IFRS across African countries if the introduction of IFRS is to bring the expected benefits to investors and other users. Hence, the lack of full compliance should remain a concern for regulators, professional accounting bodies and policymakers.

This study contributes to the literature by providing further insights that, within the African region an understudied context, extend current understanding of the association between CG mechanisms and COMP.

This paper aims to test whether the extent of compliance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 7 requirements is value relevant and whether it influences the value relevance of the firm's accounting information (book value of shareholders' equity and net income).

The sample for this paper consists of 288 financial institutions listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) from 2016 to 2019. Panel regressions have been used in this study.

The findings reveal that compliance with IFRS 7 is positively associated with the firm's market value. After making a classification between high-compliance and low-compliance companies, the authors' results indicate that the compliance level is positively associated with the value relevance of net income. Surprisingly, when examining the value relevance of financial instruments disclosures (FID) supplied after the adoption of IFRS 9, the authors find that book values of shareholders' equity and earnings are not more value relevant in the post-IFRS 9 period.

Given that the authors' analysis has been restricted to the Canadian setting, the regression results might not be generalized for other countries with different capital markets features.

The authors' findings point out that FID can affect investors' decisions as well as their confidence in the companies in which they invest. Hence, the regulatory bodies should gear more efforts to ensure high-compliance levels.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this research is among the first attempts to investigate whether the new FID (after the adoption of IFRS 9) improves the firm disclosure quality and enhances the value relevance of accounting information.