Empirical evidence suggests that the positive effects of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption in Brazil are confined to entities with better governance and those with incentives to opt out of the weak institutional and poor governance environment. The evidence also indicates that Brazilian firms show a lower level of accounting quality than Continental European and Anglo-Saxon firms. Despite applying IFRS as a set of high quality accounting standards, country-specific characteristics still affect the implementation of IFRS. Future research could seek to identify the role of corporate incentives in successfully adopting IFRS in less-developed countries compared to countries with higher levels of investor protection.

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