The term “audit style” is used to characterize the unique set of internal working rules of each Big 4 audit firm for the implementation of auditing standards and the enforcement of GAAP within their clienteles. Audit style implies that two companies audited by the same Big 4 auditor, subject to the same audit style, are more likely to have comparable earnings than two firms audited by two different Big 4 firms with different styles. By comparable we mean that two firms in the same industry and year will have a more similar accruals and earnings structure. For a sample of U.S. companies for the period 1987 to 2011, we find evidence consistent with audit style increasing the comparability of reported earnings within a Big 4 auditor's clientele.
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The binary classification of firms into profits or losses represents a powerful heuristic. The literature that has examined the impact on the firm of this earnings heuristic has focused on the earnings management actions of small profit firms. The impact of this earnings heuristic on the actions of firms reporting accounting losses and the decision-making effects the heuristic may have other than earnings management have not been examined. In this study we hypothesize that reporting an accounting loss acts as a heuristic trigger for firms to exercise the abandonment option and discard unproductive investments. The results are consistent with the hypothesis. We find that there is a sharp and economically significant discontinuity around zero in the level of investment in labor between small profit and small loss firms. The discontinuity is due to loss firms having a lower-than-expected level of investment in labor, given their economic fundamentals. Further tests show that this discontinuity is due to the exercise of the abandonment option. We find that firms switching from a profit to a loss cut labor to a greater extent than other firms with similar changes in earnings that do not pass the loss threshold. Taken together the results are consistent with the accounting loss heuristic acting as a major disciplinary or incentive altering event that resolves agency problems.
In the modern process of globalization, IFRS standards are widely used in the financial world, Russian Federation is one of these examples. The application of IFRS in Russian Federation first began in the early 90-ies of the twentieth century. During IFRS adoption many companies were involved in this process. Nowadays, a big part of all Russian companies obligatory use IFRS standards to prepare their statements. The purpose of this article is to analyse current practices of financial reporting procedures, its compliance with the rules of the IAS 1 as well as identifying the dependencies between the auditor selection and the quality of reporting. For this paper, a special Questionnaire was developed and for each selected organization a special profile, which included analysis of all financial statements for the period of the 2015 year was created. The study shows that the financial reports quality of the largest Russian companies on a high level. However, many companies face the problem of RAS and IFRS differences during reports transformation that directly influences its quality. During the study process it becomes clear, that auditor has a direct impact on the financial statements quality.
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