题 目：The Effect of Engagement Auditors on Financial Statement Comparability
报告人：齐保垒，西安交通大学管理学院会计与财务系，教授
时 间：2018年12月10日（星期一），15：00-16：30
地 点：嘉庚二203室
主持人：杜兴强 教授
参 加 者：对会计、财务研究有兴趣的师生
论文摘要：Prior literature shows that audit firms’ style affects financial statement comparability, because each audit firm has its own internal working rules that guide and standardize the audits (Francis, Pinnuck, and Watanabe 2014). We argue that engagement auditors’ style could have a distinguishable effect on comparability, incremental to the effect of the audit firms. This is because engagement auditors exercise professional judgment for each client’s specific circumstance and their style in implementing the internal working rules could affect clients’ financial statement comparability. We first show that the engagement-auditor fixed effect significantly improves the adjusted R2 in explaining the cross-sectional variation in clients’ accrual comparability with industry peers, after controlling for the audit firm and office fixed effect. We then document that engagement auditors’ past comparability style explains their existing and new clients’ comparability with industry peers, suggesting that engagement auditors’ style persists over time. Finally, we find that within the same audit firm or office, two clients audited by the same engagement auditor have more comparable accruals than two clients audited by different auditors. Taken together, our findings suggest that the engagement auditors have a distinguishable effect on financial statement comparability.
