Accounting Standards and International Portfolio Holdings

54 Pages Posted: 7 Jul 2009 Last revised: 7 Mar 2014

See all articles by Gwen Yu

Gwen Yu

University of Michigan

Aida Sijamic Wahid

University of Toronto - Accounting; University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management

Date Written: March 4, 2014

Abstract

Do differences in countries’ accounting standards affect global investment decisions? We explore this question by examining how accounting distance, the difference in the accounting standards used in the investor’s and the investee’s countries, affects the asset allocation decisions of global mutual funds. We find that investors tend to underweight investees with greater accounting distance. Using the mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) as an event that changed the accounting standards of various country-pairs, we examine how two sources of changes in accounting distance – (i) change due to IFRS adoption of the investee and (ii) change due to IFRS adoption in the investor’s country – affect global portfolio allocation decisions. We find that the tendency to underinvest in investees with greater accounting distance significantly weakens when accounting distance is reduced either from an investee’s IFRS adoption or from IFRS adoption in the investor’s country. The latter finding holds despite the fact that IFRS adoption in the investor’s country had no impact on the accounting standards under which the investee firms present their financial information; the only change is in the investor’s familiarity with these standards. This suggests that differences in accounting standards affect investor demand by imposing greater information-processing cost on those less familiar with the reporting standards.

Keywords: IFRS, Home bias, Harmonization, International CAPM

JEL Classification: M44, M47

Suggested Citation

Yu, Gwen and Wahid, Aida Sijamic and Wahid, Aida Sijamic, Accounting Standards and International Portfolio Holdings (March 4, 2014). Accounting Review, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1430589 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1430589

Gwen Yu (Contact Author)

University of Michigan ( email )

701 Tappan Street
R3350
Ann Arbor, MI MI 48109
United States
7347635934 (Phone)

Aida Sijamic Wahid

University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management ( email )

105 St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3E6 M5S1S4
Canada

University of Toronto - Accounting ( email )

105 St George St
Toronto, ON M5S 3E6
Canada

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