Full Adoption of IFRS in Brazil: Earnings Quality and Cost of Equity Capital

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of full adoption of IFRS on earnings quality and the cost of equity capital of Brazilian public companies in the period of 2000-2011. Given the multidimensionality of accounting information quality, the portfolio approach was adopted, which is restricted to the analysis of: i) earnings management (EM); ii) conditional conservatism; iii) value relevance; and iv) timeliness. Moreover, assuming an increase in information after full adoption, this contributes to the reduction of asymmetric information in the capital market. A reasonable conjecture is that there will be a reduction in the cost of capital given the more efficient allocation of resources. This empirical study was based on a panel data approach and differences in differences. The sample was defined from the theoretical portfolio IBrX-100, as well as utilizing 30 companies that adopted IFRS in advance. The results show that the hypothesis of an increase in accounting information quality after IFRS full adoption holds true. On the other hand, the models for analyzing the equity cost of capital, based on Li (2010), suggest a reduction in the cost of capital of around 7 basis points for companies that adopted IFRS mandatorily starting in 2010.