Audit quality and information asymmetry between traders

In this study, we investigate the association between audit quality and information asymmetry between informed and uninformed traders. We employ three proxies for information asymmetry – absolute price differences, absolute volatility differences, and absolute differences in the long/short ratio of trades – between US stock and options markets and represent audit quality through the appointment of Big n and industry specialist auditors. For a sample of 4062 firm‐years between 2002 to 2005, our results indicate that the appointment of Big n and industry specialist auditors is associated with lower information asymmetry measures. Our results are consistent with audit quality playing a role in the quality of financial reporting information and flowing through to the allocation of information among traders.     

Financial reporting and information asymmetry: an empirical analysis of the SEC's information-supplying exemption for foreign companies

This paper examines empirically the effects of domicile and SEC registration and reporting requirements on information asymmetry. We compare the adverse-selection component of the relative bid–ask spread (our measure of information asymmetry) for three samples of Nasdaq NMS companies that trade in different home markets and are subject to different standards of disclosure: registered U.S. companies, registered non-Canadian foreign companies, and unregistered non-Canadian foreign companies covered by the information-supplying exemption of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934. We find that the adverse-selection component is not significantly larger for the two foreign samples, and it is not reliably different for the registered and unregistered foreign samples. Therefore, we are unable to document that less stringent SEC registration and reporting requirements for foreign companies are associated with greater information asymmetry among investors for non-U.S. securities traded on Nasdaq.     

The effect of financial reporting quality on corporate investment efficiency: Evidence from the Tunisian stock market

Positive Accounting Theory (Watts and Zimmerman, 1978) stipulates that financial reporting has two dimensions: market signaling and monitoring managerial behaviors. Through these signaling and stewardship means, a better financial reporting quality would have significant economic consequences in terms of efficient resources allocation, which results in improving firms’ investment decision. In this paper, we examine the impact of financial reporting quality on corporate investment efficiency. Our sample is based on 25 Tunisian listed companies for the period 1997–2013. The findings confirm that some characteristics of the financial information, namely, reliability and smoothness, appear to increase the investment inefficiency, while others, i.e., conservatism and relevance, seem have no significant effect on investment decisions. We attribute such results mainly to the contextual specificities of the Tunisian environment, such as, the institutional bodies and settings, the cultural values and some characteristics of the corporate governance system.     

Audit Adjustments and Public Sector Audit Quality

In the context of austerity-inspired reforms to public audit in England we investigate the extent to which audit firms mitigate management bias in public sector financial reports. A substantial body of literature finds that both public and not-for-profit managers manage ‘earnings’ to report small surpluses close to zero by managing deficits upwards and surpluses downwards. Under agency theory, auditors acting in the interests of their principal(s) would tend to reverse this bias. We exploit privileged access to pre-audit financial statements in the setting of the English National Health Service (NHS) to investigate the impact of audit adjustments on the pre-audit financial statements of English NHS Foundation Trusts over the period 2010–2011 to 2014–2015. We find evidence that auditors act to reverse management bias in the case of Trusts with a pre-audit deficit, but find no evidence that this is the case for Trusts with a pre-audit surplus. In the case of Trusts in surplus, these findings are consistent with auditors’ interests being aligned with management, rather than principals.     

The role of ICT in reducing information asymmetry for financial access

This study assesses the role of ICT in complementing private credit bureaus (PCB) and public credit registries (PCR) in reducing information asymmetry for financial access. The empirical evidence is based on Generalised Method of Moments with 53 African countries for the period 2004–2011. The following findings are established. First on financial access: (i) the marginal effects from interactions between ICT and PCR (PCB) are consistently positive (negative); (ii) net effects from interactions are negative with the higher magnitude from PCR and (iii) only thresholds corresponding to interactions between PCR and internet penetration are within range. Second, findings on financial allocation efficiency reveal positive marginal and net effects exclusively for mobile phones and PCR. Third, allocation efficiency may be constrained by increasing financial deposits. Overall, the complementarity between information offices and ICT in boosting financial access is still very limited. Policy implications are discussed with emphasis on improving the engaged complementarity and fighting surplus liquidity.     

The effect of reducing information asymmetry on loan price and quantity in the African banking industry

The purpose of this study is to assess how information sharing offices affect loan price and quantity in the African banking industry. The empirical evidence is based on a panel of 162 banks in 42 countries for the period 2001–2011. From the Generalised Method of Moments, public credit registries decrease loan price. With instrumental Quantile Regressions, two main findings are established. Public credit registries consistently decrease the price of loans whereas private credit bureaus consistently have the opposite effect. Public credit registries increase loan quantity in bottom quintiles (or banks associated with lower loan quantities) while private credit bureaus increase loan quantity in top quintiles (or banks associated with higher loan quantities).     

The impact of short-selling and margin-buying on liquidity: Evidence from the Chinese stock market

We propose a framework based on limit order book to analyze the impact of short-selling and margin-buying on liquidity. We show that when short-sellers are perceived as informed, adverse selection may lead to uninformed traders withdrawing their limit orders. Given that the Chinese stock market has strong information asymmetry and a high proportion of uninformed traders, we predict that the pilot program launched in March 2010, which lifts restrictions on short-selling and margin-buying for a designated list of stocks, may have a negative impact on liquidity. We perform difference-in-differences tests and show evidence that allowing for short-selling and margin-buying indeed has a significantly negative impact on liquidity for stocks on the designated list. In particular, the negative impact on liquidity is more pronounced for stocks with high information asymmetry. Nevertheless, when short-selling volume dries up due to regulation changes in August 2015, i.e., the “T+1” trading rule on short-selling, we show that consistent with model predictions, lifting restrictions on short-selling and margin-buying has a positive effect on liquidity.     

Equity issues and aggregate market returns under information asymmetry

We propose a simple time-series model based on information asymmetry that allows us to test the predictive power of equity and debt issues with respect to future market returns. Using this method, we find that managers’ new equity and debt issue decisions have predictive power for future market returns, when we take into account potential feedback from past market returns and structural breaks. We also take into account a cointegration relation among stock prices, equity issues and debt issues. This finding is robust with respect to various measures of market returns and consistent with the managerial timing hypothesis.     

Organized labor and information asymmetry in the financial markets

Prior results from the labor relations literature suggest that revealing information weakens management’s position in collective bargaining. Thus, when facing organized labor, management has an incentive to preserve the information asymmetry with outsiders. This study uses a sample from a large cross-section of the economy over several years to test this relation. Results are consistent with this prediction. Strong organized labor is associated with higher bid-ask spreads, higher probability of informed trading, lower trading volume and lower analyst coverage. These relations hold after controlling for numerous factors such as growth opportunities or risk.

Are Audit Committees Red Herrings?

The common expectation of committees established in the wake of the corporate debacles during 1980s in the English-speaking world is that the audit committee device will raise the standards of corporate accountability and governance by improving the quality of financial reporting. That expectation is based on the prevalent belief that by strengthening the independence of auditors and non-executive directors audit committee members will monitor the financial reporting process in an independent manner. Unless accounting practices are reformed so that financial statements can be authenticated by recourse to reliable commercial evidence, audit committees are red herrings. Such reforms are essential if audit committee members are to keep under vigilant appraisal matters pertaining to the financial governance of, and reporting by, firms: the raison d'être of their appointment.     

Voluntary disclosure and information asymmetry in Denmark

This paper examines if the level of voluntary disclosure affects information asymmetry for industrial companies listed on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange. Economic theory suggests that disclosing more information should lower the information asymmetry component of a firm's cost of capital [Leuz, C., & Verrecchia, R. E. (2000)]. The results indicate that voluntary disclosure is negatively associated with proxies for information asymmetry. The results are robust even after controlling for various firm characteristics introduced in related literature. Despite differences in institutional settings the findings in our paper are similar to the ones based on US data.     

财务报表重述公司审计质量研究

以财务报表重述公司为研究对象,考察财务报表重述公司年报审计质量。结果表明:财务报表重述的幅度对非标审计意见的出具有显著的影响力;初始差错年和报表重述年,注册会计师都能在一定程度上识别上市公司的盈余管理动机,并在审计意见中有所反映;审计师任期和对财务报表重述公司出具非标审计意见之间没有显著的相关性;事务所规模和非标审计意见的相关性并不显著,结论没有支持大事务所更有可能对重述公司出具非标审计意见。     

Foreign competition for shares and the pricing of information asymmetry: Evidence from equity market liberalization

Using the equity market liberalization of 23 emerging market countries between 1996 and 2006, we examine how the degree of competition for a firm's shares affects the price of information asymmetry. We find evidence of a significant decline in the pricing of information asymmetry as countries remove regulatory restrictions on foreign ownership. Our study provides novel evidence on the link between the degree of competitiveness of equity markets and the price of information asymmetry. The work also furthers our understanding of the economic consequences of foreign stock ownership.     

Employee quality and audit fee: evidence from China

This study investigates the association between employee quality and audit fee. Using data for firm-level employee quality (as proxied by employee education) from Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2018, we find that firms operated by high-quality employees enjoy lower audit charges. The association between employee quality and audit fee is more pronounced in firms with a culture of high integrity. Our 2SLS estimation helps us establish a causal link between employee quality and audit fee. The final validity tests suggest that high-quality employees contribute to lower audit fee by reducing audit risk and audit effort.     

Busy auditors,financial reporting timeliness and quality

We investigate whether audit partners with multiple clients are able to complete their audits in a timely fashion, an important but largely unexplored area of academic research. One view is that having multiple clients increases the knowledge and experience of the audit partner resulting in a more efficient and therefore, quicker audit. On the other hand, having multiple clients may over-burden an audit partner resulting in a slower audit process and longer completion times. We find that audit partners with multiple clients take longer to complete their annual audit. More importantly, we also find that companies with busy auditors who take longer to complete their audits also have poorer levels of financial reporting quality. Additionally, in terms of consequences for busy auditors, firms with lengthy audit report lag switched their auditors the next year suggesting that busy audit partners may lose clients if their workload is excessive and they are not able to maintain audit quality. Our results are robust to alternative measures for both audit report lag and audit partner busyness and a range of endogeneity tests. We also undertake simultaneous quantile regression to assess changes in audit report lag depending on the number of audit clients per partner where we find preliminary evidence of a knowledge spill-over effect. Consequently, our results have implications for companies, audit firms, regulators and other key stakeholders.     

The regulatory framework for financial reporting and auditing in the United Kingdom: the present position and impending changes

This paper provides an overview of the current regulatory framework for financial reporting and auditing in the United Kingdom. The framework remained stable for 10 years following significant reforms in 1990-1991. A further process of change is now taking place. These changes arise from three sources: refinements in the UK's regulatory framework, the European Commission's drive for a single capital market, and political interest in accounting regulation following the Enron collapse. The present position is explained and the future implications of recent and impending changes are considered.     

Overnight block trades in the Korean stock market

We examine the characteristics of overnight block trades in the Korean stock market from 2004 to 2015. We find that the discount on the offering price is negatively related to the number and return volatility of shares, the offering price is higher for firm-commitment contracts than for best-effort contracts, the discount level is lower for larger deal values under best-effort contracts, commission fee rates and fees are more pronounced under firm-commitment contracts, and a deal's uncertainty is related to the firm's contract choice. The incentives of sellers and investment banks are aligned unless sellers face an informational disadvantage.     

Audit report information content and the provision of non-audit services: Evidence from Spanish lending decisions

This study examines whether auditor economic independence affects the information content of going concern audit reports in the European setting. We conduct an experiment where 80 experienced Spanish loan officers from the second largest European commercial bank review a loan request under two lending scenarios: (1) a potential borrower receiving an unqualified but modified going concern opinion, and (2) a potential borrower receiving a qualified going concern opinion. Auditor economic independence, measured by the provision of non-audit services (NAS), is manipulated (absence vs. presence of significant NAS). We find that a qualified going concern audit report is interpreted as a primary warning signal (death penalty). However, the provision of NAS acts as a second order mechanism that only activates loan officers’ professional skepticism in the case of an unqualified but modified going concern report scenario. Therefore, we find evidence suggesting that the potential negative impact of a perceived lack of auditor independence depends on the nature of the audit report. Our findings have important implications for the European regulator, which is currently considering establishing an auditor independence regulation framework similar to that in the United States of America.     

The Effect of Audit Partner Diversity on Audit Quality: Evidence from China

This study examines the effects of audit partner diversity on audit quality. Using a sample of Chinese listed companies from 2004–2018, we find that audit quality is positively associated with audit partner diversity in educational background, gender, and generational cohort. These findings suggest that diverse partner teams outperform homogenous teams and support the information perspective that audit partner diversity produces different viewpoints and perspectives, thus reducing judgement bias and leading to higher audit quality. Furthermore, we find that client information asymmetry, auditor task motivation, and task ability play a moderating role in reinforcing the positive effects of audit partner diversity on audit quality. Our findings have practical implications for audit firm personnel dispatching and team formation, and heighten the need to integrate team dynamics in the audit quality framework.     

The effect of earnings surprises on information asymmetry

We examine the effect of earnings surprises on changes in information asymmetry. We hypothesize and find that asymmetry is lower (higher) in the quarter following positive (negative) earnings surprises compared to firms that meet the consensus analyst earnings forecast. The relations between earnings surprises and information asymmetry are stronger when the surprises are more likely to capture investors’ attention. Examining the source of these changes, we show that decreased information search activities is the most important factor for asymmetry declining after positive surprises; for negative surprises, decreased uninformed trading plays a dominant role increasing asymmetry.