英语论文网

within the Czech Republic. This analysis is supported by interview work with prospective preparers, auditors and other institutional representatives. The authors highlight the current situation in the Czech Republic concerning the enabling legislation for companies to prepare IFRS and the state of preparedness amongst the relevant enterprises. In the final section, the problems and prospects of the move to implement IFRS for group-listed enterprises in the Czech Republic are delineated. 2. Literature Review There are various strands in the literature on international accounting harmonization which cover such areas as: the degrees of harmonization (Tay and Parker, 1990; Emenyonu and Gray, 1996; Murphy, 2000), whether international accounting harmonization is appropriate (Hove, 1986; Cairns, 1997: Flower, 1997) and the degree of compliance with IFRS^ (Cairns, 2001; Street and Gray, 2001). Of most relevance to this paper on the implementation of IFRS would seem to be the research on the appropriateness of IFRS for developing or transitional economies, the practical implications of implementing IFRS within a country located in the continental European tradition of accounting and research on the changes to national accounting in transitional economies. In his 1998 study, based on a review of the literature on accounting and developing countries, Nobes noted various points about the appropriateness of IFRS for developing countries. He suggested that given the likely users of most enterprise financial statements in developing countries were the tax authoritiesand owners and lenders to private enterprises, adopting IFRS in developing countries, where IFRS are stated to be investor oriented (IASB, 2003; F9), may not be appropriate. In particular many of the later IAS (IAS 22-38) might not be relevant for presenting accounting information for taxation purposes. Nobes also suggested that, given the lack of a developed accountancy profession to interpret and apply the more judgemental aspects of IFRS (either as auditors or accountants), there could also be issues of the reliability of accounting information. Though he provides examples, he does not make explicit that this could be a particular issue for any accounting information based to a large extent on market data such as fair value (Nobes, 1998a). It is unlikely that the Czech Republic would be classified as a developing economy of any of the criteria suggested by Nobes (e.g. number of public companies; number of public companies deflated by (put into context of) the size of the economy), but some of the issues Nobes raises may still be relevant given the short time in which an accounting profession has developed. Further research on transitional economies has indicated structural issues with a lack of active stock markets, and corruption, which may affect the reliability of IFRS financial statements and estimations of fair values (EBRD, 2000; Sucher and Bychkova, 2001). The historical differences in accounting thought, context, ethos and practice between a number of countries that may affect the de facto preparation of IFRS financial statements have been analysed in the work of Nobes (1983). Nobes distinguishes two broad traditions: the continental European and the Anglo- Saxon. The difficulties of moving from one to the other, or seeking some harmonization among the different traditions, are well illustrated by the relative failure of the European Fourth Directive to achieve great similarity