Does size matter? The influence of large clients on office-level auditor reporting decisions

Accounting accruals are managers' subjective estimates of future outcomes and cannot, by definition, be objectively verified by auditors prior to occurrence. This causes audits of high-accrual firms to pose more uncertainty than audits of low-accrual firms because of potential estimation error and a greater chance that high-accrual firms have undetected asset realization and/or going concern problems that are related to the high level of accruals. One way that auditors can compensate for this risk exposure is to lower their threshold for issuing modified audit reports, an action that will increase modified reports and, therefore, lessen the likelihood of failing to issue a modified report when appropriate. We call this auditor reporting conservatism and test if high-accrual firms in the United States, are more likely to receive modified audit reports for asset realization uncertainties and going concern problems. Empirical results for a large sample of U.S. publicly listed companies support the hypothesis that auditors are more conservative, that is, more likely to issue both types of modified audit reports for high-accrual firms. Further analyses show that income-increasing accruals are somewhat more likely to result in reporting conservatism than income-decreasing accruals, and that only the Big Six group of auditors show evidence of reporting conservatism. These findings add to our understanding of the audit report formation process and the potentially important role played by accounting accruals in that process.

Accounting Accruals and Auditor Reporting Conservatism

The primary objective of this study is to evaluate empirically the ability of two cross-sectional models, the Cross-Sectional Jones Model and the Cross-Sectional Modified Jones Model, to detect earnings management vis-a-vis their time-series counterparts. The motivation follows because these two cross-sectional models have not been formally evaluated by prior research, and because their use offers substantial advantages to investors and researchers over their time-series counterparts. A secondary objective is to assess the robustness of findings of prior studies assessing discretionary-accruals models using our new sample and research method, which controls for potential research confounds. The evaluation involves examining the association between discretionary accruals and audit qualifications, using a sample of 166 distinct firms with qualified audit reports and a matched-pair control sample with clean audit reports. An association between large discretionary accruals generated by a model and an audit qualification provides evidence on the ability of the model to detect earnings management. Results from univariate tests that do not control for potential research confounds show that all models, except the DeAngelo Model, are consistently successful in discriminating between firms that manage earnings. Once potential research confounds are controlled, however, only the two cross-sectional models are able to detect earnings management. This last result, which highlights the importance of controlling for research confounds in earnings management studies using carefully selected samples, implies that the cross-sectional models are superior to their time-series counterparts. This finding is particularly important for future earnings management research because using a cross-sectional model rather than its time-series counterpart should result in a larger sample size that is less subject to a survivorship bias, and will also allow examining samples of firms with short history.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/000303300.pdf?abstractid=214996&mirid=1&type=2

Discretionary-Accruals Models and Audit Qualifications

This study examines how the legal and regulatory changes in China affect the relationship between client economic importance and audit quality. At the individual auditor level, we find that the propensity to issue modified audit opinions (MAOs) is negatively correlated with client importance from 1995 to 2000. However, from 2001 to 2004, when the institutional environment became more investor‐friendly, the propensity to issue MAOs is positively associated with client importance. These findings are corroborated by an analysis of regulatory sanctions. Although client importance measured at the office level is also negatively related to the propensity for MAOs from 1995 to 2000 without controlling for the auditor‐level client importance, this result is sensitive to model specification and sample composition. Our results suggest that (1) institutional improvements prompt auditors to prioritize the costs of compromising quality over the economic benefits gained from important clients; and (2) the imp...

Client Importance, Institutional Improvements, and Audit Quality in China: An Office and Individual Auditor Level Analysis

This study examines the usefulness of financial statement and other data for modeling the auditor's decision process leading to the modification of audit reports for uncertainties. The auditor faces increased responsibility to evaluate and report on uncertainty about a client's continued existence under SAS No. 58 and SAS No. 59 (AICPA [1988]). A model for predicting uncertainty qualifications would be useful as an aid to this reporting decision; it could be applied early in the audit when the auditor forms an expectation of engagement risk and again at the final stage when making the reporting decision. The model could also be used as an expectations model in studies of the information content of qualified audit opinions and for investigating changes in auditors' loss functions.' In addition, a model might provide

Richard H. Tabor

Papers

Empirical Analysis of Audit Uncertainty Qualifications

Internal Control Evaluations and Audit Program Revisions: Some Additional Evidence