Comparative Value Relevance Among German, U.S., and International Accounting Standards: A German Stock Market Perspective

Abstract

In recent years, German companies have reported consolidated financial statements under German GAAP, U.S. GAAP, or International Accounting Standards (IAS). Market observers, researchers, and regulators have argued that financial statements prepared under the shareholder (or investor) model, such as U.S. GAAP or IAS, provide better information than financial statements prepared under the stakeholder model (German GAAP). They further have argued that U.S. GAAP is more rigorously defined and, therefore, provides information superior to that under IAS. We investigate comparative value relevance, measured as the slope coefficient of the returns/earnings regression. Within our sample of German companies traded on German stock exchanges, the value relevance of U.S. GAAP- and IAS-based earnings is higher than that of German GAAP-based earnings. Our result holds only for profit observations, suggesting that reporting regime does not have an influence on the quality of earnings in the case of loss firms. However, we do not find a significant difference in value relevance between U.S. GAAP and IAS after controlling for self- selection. A major contribution of this research is that, unlike prior research, we measure stock returns for all sample firms in the German stock market only, and therefore are not reliant on the perhaps strong assumption underlying prior studies of similarity of pricing across markets domiciled in different countries.