La comparabilità dei bilanci IAS/IFRS. Teoria ed evidenze empiriche.

The application of international accounting policies is linked to the financial and economic information becoming more and more global. The current aim is to create a shared global language in order to guarantee homogeneity of information, transparency and comparability of data provided by companies. Within the IAS/IFRS financial statements the comparability is so important that it becomes one of the crucial requirements to meet in order to implement international accounting policies. The main topic of this research is the comparability of financial statements in terms of spatial and temporal dimension, taking into account both its content and form. The goal of the research is to theoretically estimate the level of achievement of spatial and temporal comparability within the IAS/IFRS system. Two aspects have been considered to analyse the level of comparability. First of all, the balance items have been analysed through relative accounting principles that include financial statement assets such as properties, plants and equipments, property investments, intangible assets and stakeholding. Within these assets, alternative criteria of valuation have been identified. Furthermore, through the analysis of both financial statement structure and content of field instructions we have shed light on the modes of presentation of these values. In addition to the theoretical analysis, an empirical approach has been applied to a congruous number of companies in order to investigate if the IAS financial statements are comparable both in terms of modes of presentation and valuation of balance items. For this reason, the financial statement documents of 2010 – 2012 of the Ftse Mib company members (excluding banking and insurance companies) have been analysed. Given the high level of capitalization and the significant and diverse number of stakeholders, these companies represent highly evolved financial communication. From a methodological prospective, the initial part of the research has been performed using a deductive method, followed by a descriptive approach related to the proposed models. Finally, an inductive 'zoom out' method has been adopted. As far as comparability content is concerned, currently, it is hard to state that the IAS/IFRS system has favoured financial statement comparability. This is because the system itself is highly permissive since it grants significant freedom of choice, regarding alternative valuation criteria, to the balance sheet editors. Given that a company has all IAS tangible assets (eight), only one type of property investments estimates a fair value. Taking into account all types of intangible assets (twelve) and three types of stakeholding, the total number of 'possible financial statements' according to the IAS/IFRS system would be 8.388.608 (B.P. = 2k1 × 1k2 × 2k3× 2k4 = 28 × 11 × 212 × 23 = 223). As far as the form of comparability is concerned, the thorough examination of IAS 1 and IFRS 8 provides evidence for the lack of a reference scheme not only in terms financial statement summaries structure and content, but also in terms of availability of information to be given to the operating segments. The theoretical analysis shows that adopting IAS/FRS policies has not helped in guarateeing spatial and temporal financial statement comparability neither in form nor in content. The empirical approach showed that the examined companies have continued to act as previously done in the past, adopting all the same valuation criteria, the cost model, which is intrinsically related to the Italian accounting culture. This mode of action reveals 'resistance' of our biggest companies in accepting the new conceptual formulation of the IAS/IFRS system as they do not see the need of developing a new communication approach. From an empirical prospective, the comparability theory, in terms of content, does not function as the companies show convergent behaviour. However, it does not eliminate or reduce the problem of theoretical incomparability. As far as the form of financial statement compatibility is concerned, the theory is validated as the companies show proliferation of different behaviours.