DIFFERENTIATED LEVELS OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND QUALITY OF ACCOUNTING INFORMATION DURING THE PROCESS OF CONVERGENCE TO INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTING STANDARDS

Abstract

The goal of this research is to analyze the impacts of the convergence process in the quality of accounting information and, more specifically, assess whether these possible reflections behave differently to the companies listed in Levels of Corporate Governance (NDGC) as opposed to firms in general. For this purpose, we used a sample of 119 companies, listed in defined periods as: before, during and after the convergence process to the IFRS model. The metrics of quality of information used were: relevance, by means of value relevance model: conservatism and timeliness by means of the Basu (1997) model. The main evidence indicated that the conservatism of the companies studied declined throughout the convergence process, however, the degree of reduction of companies listed in NDGC was lower than the other. As for the timeliness, it was observed that companies listed in NDGC were more timely before the convergence process, however, with the adoption process of IFRS, the level of timeliness was not different between groups of companies. This suggests that the adoption of IFRS has contributed positively in relation to the timeliness attribute for companies that are not listed in NDGC. It was also observed that the relevance of accounting information has improved with the adoption of IFRS, but, before and during partial adoption, information about companies listed on NDGC showed a higher level of relevance than the others, however, with the full adoption there is no evidence of distinction.