Hail, Procrustes! Harmonized accounting standards as a Procrustean bed *

This article finds that the use of a harmonized accounting standard, such as the International Financial Reporting Standards, increases the information available to markets only if institutional differences across countries using the harmonized standard are insignificant. In all other cases, harmonization of reporting standards destroys information rather than increasing it. This article also contributes to methodology, introducing techniques for studying nonpartitional information structures.