This study examines the associations between four economic outcomes of the 2005 mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards ( IFRS ) and concurrent changes in two important accounting constructs, accounting comparability and reporting quality. My primary purpose is to evaluate the relative importance of cross‐country accounting comparability and firm‐specific reporting quality in explaining previously documented increases in Tobin's Q, stock liquidity, analyst forecast accuracy, and analyst forecast agreement following IFRS adoption. Given that improvements in both comparability and reporting quality are primary stated objectives of the International Accounting Standards Board ( IASB ), it is important to understand their relative roles in shaping the information environment of financial statement users following IFRS adoption. Using 1,861 first‐time adopters in 23 countries, I find that firms with a larger improvement in comparability have larger increases in Q, liquidity, forecast accuracy, and forecast agreement following adoption, relative to other adopters. In contrast, improvements in reporting quality around adoption appear to have only a second‐order effect that is generally limited to Q effects among those adopters with concurrent improvements in comparability. These results are robust to alternative design and variable specifications. Finally, I continue to find these results for samples restricted to countries with weaker pre‐adoption institutional environments and countries that did not initiate proactive financial statement reviews, indicating that strong institutions and regulatory improvements are not driving the results. Overall, my results suggest that improvements in cross‐country accounting comparability played an important role in the previously documented economic benefits that accrued to 2005 mandatory IFRS adopters.

Using industry restatement contagion as an external negative shock, we study the effectiveness of enterprise risk management (ERM) in mitigating downside risk and enhancing investor confidence. We find that ERM curbs overinvestment and earnings misstatement among firms when other firms in their industry engage in undisclosed misstatements that are subsequently restated. Following the announcements of these industry restatements, peers with ERM experience a smaller increase in implied volatility skewness. These effects are driven by peers with young CEOs, complex segment structures, low prior earnings performance, and in competitive industries. Overall, our findings highlight ERM's role in bolstering investor confidence by effectively managing firms' underlying risks.

We provide evidence on the preliminary effects of mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards ( IFRS ) on accounting quality for a relatively broad set of firms from 20 countries that adopted IFRS in 2005 relative to a benchmark group of firms from countries that did not adopt IFRS matched on the strength of legal enforcement, industry, size, book‐to‐market, and accounting performance. Relative to these benchmark firms, we find that IFRS firms exhibit significant increases in income smoothing and aggressive reporting of accruals, and a significant decrease in timeliness of loss recognition; however we do not find significant differences across IFRS and benchmark firms in meeting or beating earnings targets. Our findings contrast with findings in earlier studies which suggest that IFRS adoption leads to increased accounting quality. Our findings primarily hold for firms in strong enforcement countries, which suggests that enforcement mechanisms in these countries were not able to counter the initial effects of greater flexibility in IFRS relative to domestic GAAP .