Question :

1 Recognize some factors that might be expected to describe why different countries use different systems of accounting?

2 Nobes(1998) proposes that for countries that have organizations that rely comparatively heavily on equity markets, as opposed to other sources of finance, there can be a greater propensity for such organizations to make public disclosures of information. Evaluate this argument.

3 In the early 1990s, the US Financial Accounting Standards Board's chairperson Dennis Beresford claimed that the US reporting and accounting system was regarded by many as 'the most comprehensive and complicated system in the world'. Determine this statement. How do you think its validity may have changed in the after math of accounting failures at Enron, WorldCom and Andersen in 2001-02? Do you imagine that the US system could be regarded as sophisticated in all cultural contexts?

4 Determine how reasonable it is to consider that the inflow of foreign investment into Australia would have been restricted if Australia, throughout the decision of the Financial Reporting Council, had not made the decision to adopt IFRS from 2005.