Download or read book Auditor Tenure Information Asymmetry and Earnings Quality written by Sidney Leung and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We confirm the results of prior studies that auditor tenure improves earnings quality on average. We extend their findings to show that the improvement in earnings quality resulting from longer auditor tenure is greater for firms with higher information asymmetry, after controlling for auditor's industry specialization. We argue that audits of client firms with higher information asymmetry demand more client specific knowledge that cannot be gleaned from industry or general experience. Longer tenure helps auditors acquire such knowledge and therefore, the benefit of longer audit tenure is greater in firms with greater information asymmetry. We use bid-ask spread, return volatility, intensity of R&D expenditure and a composite distance measure to measure information asymmetry. Our results imply that frequent auditor changes are costlier for firms with higher information asymmetry. At the policy level, our results imply that mandatory auditor rotation is more (less) costly for firms with high (low) information asymmetry.

Download or read book Summary of the Accounting Establishment written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Government Operations. Subcommittee on Reports, Accounting, and Management and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Understanding Accounting Academic Research written by Stephen R. Moehrle and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2013-06-25 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accounting scandals such as Enron and WorldCom ushered in several regulatory overhauls including Sarbanes-Oxley. This monograph summarizes and synthesize a decade of academic research to develop an evolving dominant explanation around these myriad changes.

Download or read book Collaborative Tenure Audit Committee Chair Changes and Earnings Management written by Nelson Milan Carrasco Abarca and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a recent concept release the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) highlighted concerns regarding auditor independence and auditor objectivity. They expressed concern that auditors may have a bias to accept management's views, particularly in long auditor tenure relations, and asked for public comments on the idea of mandatory auditor rotation. Prior research has focused primarily on the auditor side of the relation, however, my study considers the collaborative effect of the three parties involved in the financial reporting process (management (Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the auditor, and the audit committee). I find that longer collaborative tenure between the CEO and the auditor is associated with lower positive discretionary accruals (i.e., less earnings management). This finding is contrary to the PCAOB's concerns regarding long auditor tenure and lower financial reporting quality. I do not find that the joint tenure of the three parties (CEO, auditor and audit committee chair) is significantly associated with earnings management or accrual quality. I also find that the first year of an audit committee chair change is associated with an increase in positive discretionary accruals. This association does not differ based on different lengths of auditor tenure. However, longer collaborative tenure between the auditor and the CEO constrains earnings management and there is an even greater effect when there is an audit committee chair change (i.e., there are lower positive discretionary accruals). This study provides evidence that longer auditor tenure is not necessarily an undesirable situation, either by itself and particularly not if the long tenure is coupled with long tenure of the CEO.

Download or read book Earnings Quality written by Jennifer Francis and published by Now Publishers Inc. This book was released on 2008 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This review lays out a research perspective on earnings quality. We provide an overview of alternative definitions and measures of earnings quality and a discussion of research design choices encountered in earnings quality research. Throughout, we focus on a capital markets setting, as opposed, for example, to a contracting or stewardship setting. Our reason for this choice stems from the view that the capital market uses of accounting information are fundamental, in the sense of providing a basis for other uses, such as stewardship. Because resource allocations are ex ante decisions while contracting/stewardship assessments are ex post evaluations of outcomes, evidence on whether, how and to what degree earnings quality influences capital market resource allocation decisions is fundamental to understanding why and how accounting matters to investors and others, including those charged with stewardship responsibilities. Demonstrating a link between earnings quality and, for example, the costs of equity and debt capital implies a basic economic role in capital allocation decisions for accounting information; this role has only recently been documented in the accounting literature. We focus on how the precision of financial information in capturing one or more underlying valuation-relevant constructs affects the assessment and use of that information by capital market participants. We emphasize that the choice of constructs to be measured is typically contextual. Our main focus is on the precision of earnings, which we view as a summary indicator of the overall quality of financial reporting. Our intent in discussing research that evaluates the capital market effects of earnings quality is both to stimulate further research in this area and to encourage research on related topics, including, for example, the role of earnings quality in contracting and stewardship.

Download or read book Auditor Tenure Auditor Specialization and Information Asymmetry written by Ali R. Almutairi and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the association between bid-ask spread, a market based measure of information asymmetry, and auditor industry specialization and auditor tenure. Our results show that information asymmetry is negatively related to the employment of an industry specialist auditor and positively related to audit firm tenure. These results are consistent across measures of specialization based on market share, portfolio share, and a composite measure of specialization introduced by Neal and Riley (2004). However, further tests refine those conclusions, in that the positive association between tenure and information asymmetry differs between specialist and non-specialist auditors. Specifically, we find that bid-ask spread is increasing in tenure for clients of non-specialist regardless of which measure of specialization is used, while the relation between bid-ask spread and tenure is statistically significant for clients of specialists for only one of the three specialization measures. These findings are consistent with a market that perceives audit quality diminishing with tenure for non-specialist auditors; and a market that finds audit quality increasing with industry specialization.

Download or read book Auditor Tenure and the Ability to Meet or Beat Earnings Forecasts written by Larry R. Davis and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We examine the relation between auditor tenure and a firm's ability to use discretionary accruals to meet or beat analysts' earnings forecasts. Regulators have long expressed concern over the use of earnings management to attain earnings targets. These concerns are compounded by lingering questions over whether long-term auditor-client relationships impair an auditor's ability to independently stem such practices. The profession counter-argues that mandatory auditor rotation reduces auditors' familiarity with the client and adversely affects audit quality. Consistent with both arguments, we find that firms with both short (two to three years) and long (13-15 years or more) tenure are more likely to report levels of discretionary accruals that allow them to meet or beat earnings forecasts. The results suggest that while regulatory mandates for periodic auditor turnover have negative effects, sustained long term auditor-client relationships may be also detrimental to audit quality. The generalizability of our results may not extend to firms that are not covered by analysts, as these firms do not face the same public pressure to manage earnings in order to meet or beat expectations.

Download or read book Analytical Review of Auditor Tenure Studies in Iran written by Hossein Mehrabani and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper reviews the classification and analysis of research in the field of auditor tenure in Iran. The ultimate goal of this study was to determine the studies in this field and provide a database of research set out in the form of academic dissertations and articles published in scientific journals of the auditor's tenure. Classification and analysis of studies published since the beginning of the first journal in the field of accounting auditor tenure until the end of 1394, based on the descriptive approach and content analysis of 30 studies have been done. Research carried out in 13 categories earnings management, conservatism, auditor independence, audit quality, uncertainty of data, information inequality, life cycle, efficiency and long-term investment, discretionary accruals, stock liquidity, profitability and growth of companies' ability to predict error earnings forecast, earnings response coefficient and size of the organization and management of real activity is divided. The results showed that 30% of earnings management, conservatism 23.4 percent, audit quality 13.3 percent, and the rest they each have 3.3% of studies over the years to form. Most studies were also associated with the tenure of earnings management, and audit quality and conservatism.

Download or read book Earnings Quality written by Ferdinand A. Gul and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior studies suggest that auditors with short tenure are associated with lower earnings quality because of the lack of client-specific knowledge and/or low balling. In this study, we examine whether industry specialization of auditors and low balling affect the association between auditor tenure and earnings quality. We find that the association between shorter auditor tenure and lower earnings quality is weaker for firms audited by industry specialists compared to non-specialists. In addition, we do not find results consistent with the low balling explanation.

Download or read book Earnings Management written by Joshua Ronen and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-08-06 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of earnings management, aimed at scholars and professionals in accounting, finance, economics, and law. The authors address research questions including: Why are earnings so important that firms feel compelled to manipulate them? What set of circumstances will induce earnings management? How will the interaction among management, boards of directors, investors, employees, suppliers, customers and regulators affect earnings management? How to design empirical research addressing earnings management? What are the limitations and strengths of current empirical models?

Download or read book Evidence on the Relation between Audit and Earnings Quality Do Clients of Higher Quality Auditors Provide Better Financial Reporting written by and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2017-06-20 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject Business economics - Accounting and Taxes, grade: 1,3, , language: English, abstract: This paper studies the relation between audit and earnings quality. It examines whether firms audited by a Big 4 member engage in higher earnings management activities as proxied by the magnitude of discretionary and absolute accruals, as well as an income smoothing measure. The author predicts that large auditors have higher competencies and incentives to deliver a higher quality audit. Therefore, their clients are expected to reveal less sophisticated earnings management and thus higher earnings quality. The results do not support this relation. Since standardsetters have been concerned about managers’ use of discretion to manage earnings in their financial reports, an increasing amount of empirical research was conducted to address this issue, additionally to regulation. While independent auditors (aim to) assure that these statements are in accordance with legal compliance, the actual audit quality can be grasped as the contingency that the auditor exposes and discloses an anomaly in their clients’ financial reports. Whereas numerous audit scandals threaten the trustworthiness of well-known large auditors, there is various research revealing that Big N audited firms are supposed to disclose financial reports of higher quality. Supplementing misguiding accrual accounting practices in this regard, this study also addresses another proxy for earnings management: income smoothing. Burgstahler and Dichev (1997) explain corporate income smoothing with the fact that managers avoid revealing earning decreases and losses to diminish costs arising from transactions with stakeholders. Similarly, Degeorge, Patel and Zeckhauser (1999) show that managers smooth earnings to meet analysts’ forecasts. On the other hand there are various contrary studies. DeFond and Jimbalvo (1993) found that auditor-client disagreements resulting from earnings management, are more present in Big 4 audited firms. They explain this with the properties of the “common” Big 4 clients. For the reason of the ambiguous results, it is interesting to study the effects and compare them with prior evidence to answer the question whether Big 4 auditors deliver “higher” quality in terms of a “better” financial reporting. The terms are operationalized using a dis-cretionary accruals and income smoothing measure and analyzed for (non-)Big 4 audited UK-firms in the period 2005-2011.

Download or read book Audit Regulations Audit Market Structure and Financial Reporting Quality written by Christopher Bleibtreu and published by . This book was released on 2021-11-24 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Audit Regulations, Audit Market Structure, and Financial Reporting Quality provides a structured overview of the empirical and analytical literature on the effects of audit market regulations. After a short introduction, the monograph is organized as follows. Chapter II addresses the structure of the audit markets of industrialized countries. First presenting an overview of the concentration metrics used to describe the structure of an audit market or a market segment, then providing the empirical findings on audit market concentration at the national level and presenting an overview of the main reasons that led to the currently high degree of concentration. Chapter III summarizes the reasons why regulators worldwide consider a high degree of concentration to be a concern. In particular, it reviews the regulator's assumption that a high degree of concentration inevitably leads to a low degree of competition and to the corresponding effects of low audit quality and high audit fees. It also provides an overview of the empirical findings on the association between concentration and audit quality and fees, respectively. Chapter IV introduces the mandatory audit firm rotation, the prohibition on the joint supply of audit and non-audit services, and joint audits as examples for regulations that are likely to have both incentive and market structure effects. Chapter V summarizes the empirical findings on the effects of these regulations on audit quality and market structure. Chapter VI summarizes models that regard the market structure as given. The results from these models show that the effects of regulations are not straightforward, but depend on various factors related to the auditor, the client, and the legal environment. Chapter VII gives an overview of analytical research that simultaneously considers incentive effects and market structure effects. It also provides a brief overview of industrial organization models that seem suitable to expand the models applied to investigate the effects of audit regulations. Chapter VIII concludes and highlights avenues for future research.

Download or read book Auditor Tenure and Perceptions of Audit Quality written by Aloke Ghosh and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We analyze how investors and information intermediaries perceive auditor tenure. Using earnings response coefficients from returns-earnings regressions as a proxy for investor perceptions of earnings quality, we document a positive association between investor perceptions of earnings quality and tenure. Further, we find that the influence of reported earnings on stock rankings becomes larger with extended tenure, although the association between debt ratings and reported earnings does not vary with tenure. Finally, we find that the influence of past earnings on one-year-ahead earnings forecasts becomes larger as tenure increases. In general, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that investors and information intermediaries perceive auditor tenure as improving audit quality. One implication of our study is that imposing mandatory limits on the duration of the auditor-client relationship might impose unintended costs on capital market participants.

Download or read book Audit Partner Tenure Audit Firm Tenure and Discretionary Accruals written by Chih-Ying Chen and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mandatory audit partner rotation has been adopted in certain countries while audit firm rotation is still being debated in many places. Most of the extant research on the relation between auditor tenure and earnings quality provides evidence at the audit firm level. However, since audit firm tenure is correlated with partner tenure and audit firm rotation is more costly than partner rotation, it is important to know whether earnings quality is related to audit firm tenure, partner tenure, or both. We investigate this issue using a sample of Taiwanese companies for which the audit report must be signed by two partners with their names disclosed in the report. Using performance adjusted discretionary accruals as a proxy for earnings quality, we find that the absolute and positive values of discretionary accruals decrease significantly with partner tenure. After controlling for partner tenure, we find that absolute discretionary accruals decrease significantly with audit firm tenure. Our findings are not consistent with the arguments that earnings quality decreases with extended audit partner tenure and that audit firm rotation in addition to partner rotation would improve earnings quality. Our results are robust to alternative ways of measuring partner tenure under the dual signature system. However, since the audit reports do not disclose which partner is responsible for maintaining the auditor-client relationship, measurement errors in partner tenure remain an issue that cannot be fully addressed in the context of our study.

Download or read book Auditor Independence written by Ferdinand A. Gul and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines whether the impact of non-audit fees on auditor independence is contingent on auditor tenure. The results, based on a sample of 4,720 U.S. firms for the years 2000 and 2001, show that there is a positive association between non-audit fees and positive discretionary current accruals, a proxy for auditor independence, for firms with short auditor tenure of not more than three years. These findings suggest that non-audit fees may impair auditor independence when auditor tenure is short and not when auditor tenure is long. Furthermore, exploratory analyses show that the positive association between non-audit fees and earnings management for firms with short auditor tenure is significant for small clients but not for large clients. Taken together, these results suggest that the association between non-audit fees and auditor independence is contingent upon auditor tenure, and that high non-audit fees have a negative impact on auditor independence when audit tenure is short and client firm size is small.

Download or read book The Benefits and Costs of Group Affiliation written by Stijn Claessens and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper investigates the benefits and associated agency costs of using internal capital markets through affiliating with groups using data of two thousand firms from nine East Asian economies between 1994-96. We find that mature and slow-growing firms with ownership structures more likely to create agency problems gain more from group affiliation, while young and high-growth firms more likely lose. Agency problems are important explanatory factors of firm value in economies outside Japan, but less so in Japan. Consistent with the literature, financially-constrained firms benefit from group affiliation. Our results are robust to different time periods and estimation techniques.

Download or read book Does Auditor Tenure Improve Audit Quality Moderating Effects of Industry Specialization and Fee Dependence written by Chee Yeow Lim and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We investigate whether the relation between auditor tenure and audit quality is conditional on auditor specialization and fee dependence. Although prior studies have investigated the relation between extended auditor-client tenure and audit quality, none has examined how this relation is jointly influenced by both auditor specialization and fee dependence. Our main analyses, using accrual quality as a measure of audit quality, show that firms audited by specialists (vs. non-specialists) have relatively higher audit quality with extended auditor tenure, and that this relation is negatively moderated by auditors' fee dependence on clients. These results are robust to sensitivity tests, and alternative proxies for audit quality such as the issuance of going concern opinions and the market's response to quarterly earnings surprises.