Accounting Systems' Classification in Latin America
This chapter aims to propose a classification based on accounting systems of five Latin American countries that have adopted IFRS. More specifically, we seek to identify which is the position of each country within this group of countries as a whole, providing empirical evidences of whether the accounting practices in Latin America countries are harmonized in the IFRS era, or not. Despite of international efforts around the convergence to IFRS, where companies would use the same accounting standard, reducing the differences in terms of accounting practices, there is empirical evidence of significant differences in the way that IFRS has been applied worldwide, resulting in “national versions of IFRS”. The results of this chapter provide empirical evidence that accounting practices in Latin America countries are harmonized, considering that the five countries analyzed have similar characteristics in terms of accounting systems.