Accounting change in Norway

David Alexander and Hans Schwencke

European Accounting Review, 2003, vol. 12, issue 3, 549-566

Abstract: During the last twenty years, a change from a continental towards what can broadly be characterized as an Anglo-Saxon perspective of accounting has taken place in Norway. This paper discusses whether the new Norwegian Accounting Act of 1998 and the accounting standards issued by the Norwegian standard-setting body represent a further focus on the Anglo-Saxon perspective. Important parts of Norwegian accounting regulation, particularly the Norwegian Conceptual Framework, are highlighted and compared with the positions of European (EC Accounting Directives) and international (IASB) accounting. The findings indicate that the Anglo-Saxon perspective of accounting appears to be strengthened by the new Norwegian law. Even if the findings indicate that the IAS solutions are generally accepted under the new regulation, the flexibility of the regulation seems to indicate that other solutions are accepted as well. These 'specific Norwegian' accounting solutions may generally lead to balance sheets which are less prudent than the balance sheets set up under IAS. If one accepts that a characteristic of Anglo-Saxon accounting is that it is, historically, generally less prudent than continental European accounting, it can indeed be concluded that Norwegian financial reporting has become more Anglo-Saxon than Anglo-Saxon countries in general. One factor seems to weaken this conclusion: Norway does not allow the revaluation of fixed assets.

Date: 2003
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0963818031000087934 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:euract:v:12:y:2003:i:3:p:549-566

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/REAR20

DOI: 10.1080/0963818031000087934

Access Statistics for this article

European Accounting Review is currently edited by Laurence van Lent

More articles in European Accounting Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().