Abstract
For the six-month period ending 30 June 1993, Daimler-Benz AG registered as net income a profit of DM168m under German GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and a loss of DM949m under US GAAP.1 The usual conclusion, following cases like this, is that there is a need to increase the degree of international harmonisation of accounting regulation in order to prevent such situations from occurring again. In this chapter, with the help of an analytical model, I openly question this conclusion and show that, even if some form of international regulation is certainly needed, the optimal regime does not necessarily exclude the possibility of reporting different results in different countries.
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The author wishes to thank Meg Meyer for her comments on previous versions. The observations made by Joshua Ronen and Massimo Warglien at the Workshop on Accounting Regulation in Siena were particularly helpful in the final revision.
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Trombetta, M. (2001). The Regulation of Public Disclosure: An Introductory Analysis with Application to International Accounting Standards. In: McLeay, S., Riccaboni, A. (eds) Contemporary Issues in Accounting Regulation. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4589-7_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4589-7_7
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