题 目：Are auditor disclosed materiality thresholds informative of firms’ earnings quality? – Evidence from the revised ISA 700 audit report
报告人：Na Li，新加坡管理大学会计学院，助理教授
时 间：2018年11月21日（星期叁）上午10：00-11：30
地 点：嘉庚二512
主持人：刘馨茗 助理教授
参 加 者：对会计、财务研究有兴趣的师生
论文摘要：Under the Financial Reporting Council’s presumption that mandating new disclosure requirement in the audit report would provide information useful to investors, we examine whether the auditor disclosed materiality threshold is associated with the firm’s earnings quality. We document that a lower threshold of materiality level is associated with a higher earnings quality, as measured by lower discretionary accruals, higher accruals quality, and less earnings smoothing. We also find some evidence that the negative association between auditor disclosed materiality threshold and earnings quality is more pronounced when the auditor is more independent, when management’s incentive to manage earnings is higher, and when there is lower information uncertainty. Finally, we find some evidence that investors placed less weight on earnings surprise when disclosed materiality threshold is higher. Overall, our results are useful to investors who rely on the new audit report disclosures to gain insights into the audit process and more importantly to infer the quality of the firm’s reported earnings. Our results could also be relevant to regulators, such as the PCAOB and IAASB, who are contemplating whether to impose similar materiality threshold disclosure requirements in audit reports.
