| Abstract: |
Historically, the format of financial statements has varied from one country
to another. Recently, due to the attractiveness of their capital markets, the
strength of their accounting professions and the influence of their
institutional investors, Anglo-American countries have seen the impact of
their accounting practices on other nations increase steadily, even
influencing the actual format of financial statements. Given that French
accounting regulations allow a certain degree of choice in consolidated
balance sheet format (‘by nature’ or ‘by term’) and income statement format
(‘by nature’ or ‘by function’), this study examines a sample of 199 large
French listed firms in an attempt to understand why some of these firms do not
use the traditional French formats (‘by nature’ for the balance sheet and ‘by
nature” for the income statement), instead preferring Anglo-American practices
(‘by term’ format for the balance sheet and ‘by function’ format for the
income statement). We first analyze the balance sheet and income statement
formats separately using a logit model, then combine the two and enrich the
research design with a generalized ordered logit model and a multinomial logit
regression. Our results confirm that the major driving factor behind the
adoption of one or two alternative formats is the firm’s degree of
internationalization, not only financial (auditor type, foreign listing and
the decision to apply alternative accounting standards) but also commercial
(company size and the internationalization of sales). |