Ochuko B. Emudainohwo

This study examines the impact of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) on the stock exchange development (SED) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The essence is to offer suggestions on how the adoption of IFRS in the SSA region can benefit their SED. The study employed logistic regression analysis of data for 40 SSA countries for the period 2010–2018. Data were extracted from the World Bank’s World Development Index (WDI) database, sampled countries’ stock exchange websites, and the IFRS website. The dependent variable (SED) took two values: 1 – if a stock exchange is established in the observed country’s period, otherwise – 0. The model result was well fitted: p < 0.0001, correctly classified an overall SED accuracy up to 84.84% and excellent area predictive power at a receiver operator characteristic of 0.9347. The study observed that IFRS had high degree of co-movement with SED, and changes in IFRS had a strong positive impact on SED. Besides, changes in market size, ICT infrastructure, and public sector management and institution (PSMI) had a positive and significant impact on SED. The odd ratio of SED compared to non-SED is greatest with IFRS (40.67 times), and for the other variables, the ratios are: market size (4.02), ICT infrastructure (1.26), and PSMI (2.73), respectively. On a greater extent, SSA countries should allow the use of IFRS for financial reporting to expedite SED.