In this thesis, we study the economic consequences, in terms of instability, of the mandatory IAS/IFRS adoption in the banking industry. The thesis is organized as follows. In a first part (Chapter I), we develop a theoretical framework whose purpose is to understand the mechanisms through which the mandatory IAS/IFRS adoption by banks may influence the probability of occurrence of a banking crisis. At this stage, we show that several arguments, derived from the contractual and informational perspectives of accounting, can be mobilized in order to justify the hypothesis that the mandatory IAS/IFRS adoption has a positive or a negative influence on banking stability. The second part of the thesis (Chapters II, III, IV) propose three empirical studies, based on samples of European banks, related to some of the issues discussed in the first part. The results of these studies indicate that: (1) banks have improved capital adequacy following the IAS/IFRS adoption, due to a better market discipline in an IFRS environment; (2) banks constrained in liquidity (and only these banks) have increased their credit supply following the IAS/IFRS adoption, due to an easier access to external resources in an IFRS environment; (3) fair value accounting does not contribute to degrade the explanatory power of a default risk model based on accounting variables. These results, consistent with a positive influence of the IAS/IFRS adoption on bank stability, tend to moderate the criticisms expressed against IFRS accounting standards, in the background of the recent global banking crisis.
