کیفیت حسابرسی و ویژگی های پیش بینی های سود مدیریتی Audit quality and attributes of management earnings forecasts

I. Introduction Prior research has examined the association between corporate governance (outside directors, audit committees, board of directors) attributes and financial reporting quality (Kelton and Yang 2008; Davidson et al. 2005; Abbott et al. 2004; Klein 2002; Beasley 1996). These studies suggest that financial reporting quality could be improved by well-structured governance mechanisms. In this study, we examine whether audit quality, as one attribute of good corporate governance, along with other attributes of corporate governance extends to financial disclosure and more precisely to the choice of management earnings forecast attributes.1 Palmrose (1988) and Krishnan and Schauer (2000) suggest a general consensus that the external audit constitutes a key of corporate governance.2 The extant accounting literature documents mixed evidence that higher-quality audit firms may influence the firm’s forecast choices (Clarkson 2000; Davidson and Neu 1993; Feng et al. 2009; McConomy 1998)3 and corporate governance may be associated with management earnings forecast attributes (Ajinkya et al. 2005; Karamanou and Vafeas 2005). Our study employs audit quality in addition to two widely used measures of corporate governance (the proportion of outside directors, the proportion of aggregate institutional ownership), combined with proprietary costs, and litigation factors (Ajinkya et al. 2005).4 We provide a comprehensive study of these factors using a somewhat a recent sample of observations than employed in the earlier studies.5 In this study, we appeal to insights and results from prior research (Ajinkya et al. 2005; Feng et al. 2009; Davidson and Neu 1993; Clarkson 2000; McConomy 1998) to motivate our empirical analyses since various monitoring mechanisms (e.g., auditors, boards of directors, and institutional ownerships) may be important. Since it is plausible that the empirical links between attributes of management forecasts and underlying factors may have changed over time (e.g., SOX 2002), we provide additional insights by introducing additional measures of governance quality with a more recent period of analysis on a large sample of firms.