This study is motivated by the high frequency of loss occurrence since late 1990s among Malaysian public listed firms, and the conflicting findings of the impact of the macroeconomic conditions and firm-specific attributes on different measures of earnings quality. In addition, this study examines the impact of firms’ specific attributes on earnings quality using a better established theory, known as the life-cycle hypothesis. The objectives of this study are; (1) to examine the relationship between firms’ loss condition on conservatism as an earnings quality measure as well as the moderation of macroeconomic condition on the relationship and (2) to examine the relationship between life-cycle stages and conditional conservatism. Samples for the study are companies listed on Bursa Malaysia from 1995 to 2010. Using the C_Score measure of conservatism as the dependent variable, firms with loss condition, have been found to be significantly more conservative than profit firms. In addition, macroeconomic condition, strengthen the relationship between loss and conservatism when the results indicate that loss firms undergoing economic crisis are significantly more conservative than loss firms under normal economic condition. Incorporating the firms’ life-cycle stages, the study found that growth firms signal fewer losses than mature firms, thus accepting the set hypothesis. Implication of this study is that ignorance of these issues could lead to significantly misleading interpretation of earnings quality.

The purpose of this study is to verify the impact of international financial reporting standards (IFRS) adoption on the quality of accounting performance and efficiency of investment decisions in the Saudi business environment as an emerging economy. In this study, content analysis approach is adopted for examining the annual reports of Saudi companies listed in Saudi stock exchange market during two periods: the pre-adoption of IFRS period during the year of 2016 and the post-adoption of IFRS period during the period 2017-2018. The study uses accounting information, accounting conservatism, earning management as alternative variables of accounting performance quality. In addition to accounting profit quality, liquidity and cost of capital are also used as alternative variables for the efficiency of investment decisions. The study finds that there was a positive impact of IFRS adoption on the quality of accounting performance, since it was positively related to both the qualitative characteristics of information and accounting conservatism, while it was negatively related to earning management. IFRS also improves the efficiency of investment decisions, as it was positively related to both profit quality and liquidity while it was negatively related to cost of capital.