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We examine whether audit quality inputs are related to the conformity of financial statements to Benford's law. We find that overall financial statement conformity increases with audit fees, nonaudit fees, and audit report lag, and decreases with audit firm tenure. We also find that these audit quality inputs are more strongly associated with income statement conformity than with cash flow statement conformity. Our findings document the role that auditing plays in enhancing the conformity of financial statements to Benford's law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relation between auditor size and audit quality for a sample of U.K. private firms. Private firms prioritize tax considerations over reducing information asymmetry in their financial reporting. We find that Big 4's private clients exhibit higher levels of discretionary accruals and lower precision of accrual estimates than non-Big 4's private clients. Although Big 4 auditors are less tolerant of income-increasing earnings management, they leave more room for downward earnings management and their private clients are able to engage in greater tax avoidance. These results are stronger for standalone firms than for business groups as the latter's greater demand for stakeholder communication motivates Big 4 auditors to increase audit quality. Collectively, our evidence suggests that Big 4 auditors adjust audit quality in a more competitive segment of the audit market where client firms generally perceive the benefit from tax minimization to outweigh the cost of reduced earnings informativeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the role of financial reporting conservatism in mitigating underinvestment problems. Recognizing that volatile cash flows increase the need to access external capital markets and that agency conflicts and information asymmetry make external capital costlier than internal capital, which leads managers to forgo valuable investment projects, Minton and Schrand document a negative relation between cash flow volatility and investment. We draw on Minton and Schrand's framework to isolate underinvestment problems and hypothesize and document that conservatism mitigates the negative relation between cash flow volatility and investment and that this mitigative effect is more pronounced for firms with ex ante more severe agency conflicts. We also document that conservatism mitigates the sensitivity of investment to cash flow volatility by facilitating access to external capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An audit review (AR) is a mechanism used by boards to assess the quality of interim financial reports on a timely basis. In Canada, the AR is voluntary, with listed firms mandated to disclose when they choose to not purchase additional audit verification. Given the relatively low cost of an AR, opting out of it can be regarded as a negative signal, especially in the context of lenders' sensitivity to downside risk. Using a sample of 7,585 firm-year observations from 1,616 public firms in Canada over the period 2004-2015, we document that firms without a voluntary AR have a higher cost of debt than firms with an AR. Furthermore, after firms opt out of the AR, the increase in the cost of debt is accompanied by a rise in discretionary abnormal accruals and managers' stock-based compensation. Moreover, no-AR firms are more likely to reduce post-switch private borrowing and have lower equity analyst following. Our study is the first to document that although listed borrowers that opt out of an AR have a higher cost of debt financing, they are concurrently able to engage in more earnings management and grant their managers higher stock-based compensation because of lower external monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: We investigate the chief audit executive's (CAE) internal audit supervisory role by examining the change in internal audit monitoring effectiveness following the turnover of CAEs. Using a sample of firms listed on the small and medium enterprise board of China's stock exchange, we find that CAE turnover is accompanied by a reduction in financial reporting/internal control quality and that the reduction is more pronounced for firms whose successor CAEs have lower financial expertise than their predecessors. Further analysis shows that the negative association with financial reporting/internal control quality is stronger when the turnover is for personal reasons than when it is for internal transfer of the CAE. These findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity checks, including placebo tests and matching diagnostics. Our results highlight the importance of the CAE for a firm's internal audit functions. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: G34; M42; M51. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the association between disclosures about key value drivers (i.e., growth, synergies, human capital, brands, customers, and technology) in press releases announcing mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals and acquirer stock returns upon the announcement. We find that, after controlling for the main characteristics of the deal, acquirers that use more terms about these value drivers in press releases exhibit more negative market returns around the M&A announcement. An increase of 10% in the number of terms used about generic value drivers is associated with a decrease in announcement market‐adjusted returns of approximately 43 basis points. The negative association between terms about value drivers and acquirer stock returns is stronger for larger deals. We also find that disclosures about these value drivers in M&A announcement press releases are consistent with the subsequent subjective valuation of intangible assets recognized in acquirers' financial statements through the purchase price allocation. Our findings are relevant for investors attempting to interpret early signals about the performance of M&A and for managers communicating about these strategic investment decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relation between geographical and institutional dispersion and accounting misstatements in China. We hypothesize that geographical dispersion is positively associated with the likelihood of accounting misstatements in subsidiary firms because of increasing monitoring cost and find evidence consistent with this prediction. We also focus on institutional dispersion because institutional duality may affect an organization's behavior, but do not find that institutional dispersion is associated with accounting misstatements in subsidiary firms. Next, we find that geographical dispersion and institutional dispersion are negatively associated with misstatements in parent firms' financial statements, consistent with the investor recognition argument. Lastly, we find that the negative (positive) relation between dispersion and parent-level (subsidiary-level) misstatements is more pronounced for state-owned firms and for firms with a wider (narrower) control-ownership wedge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SYNOPSIS: We examine the relation between corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and conditional accounting conservatism. Drawing upon the stakeholder-engaging and information-enhancing perspectives of CSR activities, we hypothesize that the demand for conditional conservatism, which primarily arises from various contracting parties' concern about managerial opportunism and/or information asymmetry, is lower for better-performing CSR firms. Using the CSR ratings from the KLD database, we find, as predicted, a negative relation between CSR performance and conditional conservatism. These findings are robust to using a difference-in-differences research design and alternative measures of conditional conservatism. Further, cross-sectional analyses reveal that the negative association is more pronounced for firms with greater information asymmetry and stronger corporate governance. Overall, this study enhances our understanding of how a firm's CSR engagement may relate to an important attribute of financial reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the relation between innovation and financial reporting quality (FRQ) and the implications of audit quality for this relation. We first document a negative relation between innovation and FRQ. This result is consistent with greater earnings management at higher innovation firms, likely because of the more opaque information environment that gives managers the opportunity to act opportunistically. We then examine whether audit quality moderates the observed negative relation between innovation and FRQ because audit quality constrains managers’ opportunities to manage earnings. We find results consistent with the predicted moderating effect. Lastly, we verify that these findings hold in a difference-in-differences test designed around an exogenous event, state R&D tax credits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increased frequency of analyst forecasts during earnings announcements, empirical evidence on the interaction between the information in the earnings announcement and these forecasts is limited. We examine the implications of reinforcing and contradicting analyst forecast revisions issued during earnings announcements (days 0 and þ1) on the market response to unexpected earnings. We classify forecast revisions as reinforcing (contradicting) when the sign of analyst forecast revisions agrees (disagrees) with the sign of unexpected earnings. We document larger (smaller) earnings response coefficients for announcements accompanied by reinforcing (contradicting) analyst forecast revisions. Analyses of management forecasts suggest that analyst revisions and management forecasts convey complementary information. Cross-sectional tests show that investors react more to earnings announcements accompanied by analyst forecast revisions when there is greater consensus among analysts (lower dispersion) and that better earnings quality (higher persistence) mitigates the negative impact of contradictory analyst forecast revisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine auditor independence in the banking industry by analyzing the relation between fees paid to auditors and the extent of earnings management through loan loss provisions (LLP). We also examine whether this relation differs across large banks whose managements are required under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act to evaluate internal control over financial reporting and whose auditors must attest to the effectiveness of such internal controls, and small banks that are not subject to those requirements. We find that unexpected auditor fees are unrelated to earnings management for large banks. For small banks, we find greater earnings management via under-provisioning of LLP by banks that pay higher unexpected total and nonaudit fees to the auditor. These results suggest that auditor fee dependence on the audit client is associated with earnings management via abnormal LLP and is a potential threat to auditor independence for small banks. Our findings are relevant to policymakers contemplating new regulations in light of the recent banking crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the change in managerial discretion over financial reporting following the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (hereafter SOX). We document an increase in conservatism in financial reporting following SOX and the resulting requirement by the SEC that financial statements be certified by firms' CEOs and CFOs. First, we find that firms report lower discretionary accruals after SOX than in the period preceding SOX. Second, based on the Basu (1997) measure of conservatism, we find that firms incorporate losses more quickly than gains when they report income in the post-SOX period. These results are obtained with alternative estimation and measurement approaches and after controlling for potentially confounding variables. This empirical evidence suggests that SOX and the resultant SEC certification requirement may have altered management's discretionary reporting behavior to make it more conservative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]