. As IFRS are seen as an international benchmark, developing economies in the past
could achieve harmonisation of accounting standards in conformity with accounting standards
(full IFRS) of developed countries. The comment letters on the Exposure Draft of IFRS for
SMEs further provide anecdotal evidence for our conjecture that emergent countries perceive outsourcing
the development of accounting standards to the IASB as beneficial due to a lack of their
own capabilities (Chua and Taylor 2008, Stainbank 2011). For instance, the Institute of Chartered
Accountants of Barbados (ICAB) notes: ‘We do not have the capability to develop our own local
standards and in any event, prefer to adopt internationally recognised financial reporting standards’
(ICAB 2007). Accordingly, the costs of switching to IFRS for SMEs are likely to be relatively
low in these countries. The arguments above lead to our first hypothesis:
H1: Countries with their own local GAAP as the primary set of accounting standards are less likely to
adopt IFRS for SMEs.