The main goal of the international accounting harmonization process is to reduce accounting differences and increase the comparability of accounting information. An important perspective of international accounting convergence is formal (or de jure) convergence, that is the degree of harmonization between accounting standards and regulations. Thus, the examination of formal (or de jure) convergence between national and international accounting standards reveals not only the progress made in the international accounting harmonization process but also provides a fertile ground for improving national accounting standards through a more accurate and correct implementation of the practices and rules embodied in international accounting standards.
In the light of the above, the purpose of this paper is to qualitatively examine the level of harmonization of the Greek Accounting Standards with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), by using formal harmonization measures such as Jaccard's coefficient and Spearman's correlation coefficient, in order to measure the convergence between those two sets of accounting standards, and also to explore whether Greece’s new accounting regulations suggest an evolution towards an internationally accepted and applied accounting framework.
Acknowledgement
This work has been partly supported by the University of Piraeus Research Center