بررسی تاثیر سرمایه گذاران بین المللی بر کیفیت اطلاعات حسابداری در روسیه

This paper investigates the impact of international investors on the quality of financial accounting information in Russia. I hypothesize that international stock ownership leads to enhanced quality and adoptions or intentions to adopt IFRS by Russian firms. Data was gathered through face-to-face interviews with 100 Saint-Petersburg firms randomly selected from the INFOWAVE data base. The results are consistent with the hypotheses.

Measurement of accounting information quality is complex and difficult. In the past proxy measures have included relevance, conservatism, and objectivity (versus earnings management). However, accounting information quality can be also measured indirectly by investigating the motives and incentives of accounting information preparers. The demand for accounting information comes from various sources including managers, investors, lenders, employees, suppliers, customers, governments and the public (Alexander & Nobes, 2004). In addition countries' legal traditions and capital markets structure can be expected to affect the availability and quality of accounting information (Ball et al., 2003 and La Porta et al., 2000). This study explores the quality of accounting information in Russia using as proxies the motives and incentives of accounting information providers. Our motivation to use the Russian data is due to its world importance and because of its unique and transitional environment. Russia represents a growing market which has a significant impact on the world economy. It is a country rich in natural resources. Foreign capital is of great importance for Russian firms to develop those resources (Preobragenskaya & McGee, 2003). And, as a very large emerging market Russia offers significant opportunities for foreign investors. Furthermore, given the economy of Russia is one in transition, we can identify the impact of international investors on the quality of accounting information. In highly sophisticated market economies the value relevance of accounting information can be studied directly by examining market share prices reactions to information releases (e.g. Ali & Hwang, 2000). In other countries, private firms may dominate the economy. In those countries, smaller companies are not traded on stock exchanges and thus direct measurement of accounting information quality is not possible. In those instances Harding and McKinnon (1997) suggest looking to the intent of accounting information preparers as a reflection of users' influence. The term “provider” or “preparer” here refers to the firm's CEO. In conducting research of this nature, it is important to pay attention to the institutional environment of the country, which in many ways shapes the incentives of the accounting information provider (Ball et al., 2003, Bushman and Piotroski, 2006 and Holthausen, 2003). In my study, I focus on CEOs relative emphasis on serving four different user groups: corporate management (for purposes of decision making support), international investors, domestic investors, and tax authorities. I contend that decision usefulness is the characteristic of financial accounting that most closely associates with information quality because it captures the concept of value relevance (Shipper & Vincent, 2003). For all Russian companies two important users of accounting information are (a) firm management and (b) the tax inspectorate (Krylova, 2003 and Sucher et al., 2005). Emphasis on the internal decision support system can be expected to drive higher accounting information quality while emphasis on tax authorities' information needs, decidedly less so. Similarly, an emphasis on serving the interests of international investors (i.e., competing in international funds markets) is assumed to promote higher quality and transparency than an emphasis on serving domestic investors where competition is less. This is a fundamental assumption that supports my research. My research examines the relative emphasis CEOs place on serving international investors vis a vis other users across categories of firms. I hypothesize and test whether emphasis on international investors associates with the adoption of (or intent to adopt) IFRS. I find positive association between international ownership of a company and the company's willingness and intent to implement IFRS. IFRS clearly require higher quality reporting than existing Russian standards. The main contribution of this paper is identifying the impact of international investors on the quality of accounting information in Russia. Secondly, we contribute to the literature, e.g. Archer, Delvaille and McLeay (1995), by studying differences in IFRS convergence between exclusively Russian-owned and part foreign-owned firms. The remaining of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we define our proxies for accounting quality and describe financial accounting environment in Russia. Hypotheses are constructed in the Section 3 and methodology is described in Section 4. Section 5 deals with the results and Section 6 concludes the paper.

Firms operating in the transitional Russian economy are subject to the influence of Russian institutional environment and increasingly to the influence of foreign investors. That latter influence is not being felt uniformly across all Russian firms at this time. I hypothesized that international stock ownership leads to enhanced quality of financial accounting and adoptions or intentions to adopt IFRS by Russian firms. Consistent with the results of data analysis, I find that international investors have a positive effect on the financial accounting quality and on the willingness and intent to implement IFRS. This study expands our knowledge on accounting quality in post-Soviet Russia bringing forward the importance of international investors' impact on the quality of accounting information. The study also adds on a more general level our understanding about with-in country differences in firms, in such areas as the quality of accounting information, the use of capital finance sources and the adoption of IFRS. On a practical level implications of this study may be useful for the regulators in developing accounting policies in Russia for the different types of firms as well as for the investors planning business activities in Russia.