The Effects of Audit Quality Disclosure on Audit Effort and Investment Efficiency
建立模型评估审计质量披露的成本与收益，发现当财务报告质量较弱时，披露能激励审计师增加努力，但可能降低投资效率。
ABSTRACT We develop a model to evaluate the costs and benefits of disclosing information about audit quality. Specifically, we examine whether audit quality disclosure affects auditors' effort and investors' investment efficiency. In our setting, an auditor exerts unobservable effort to influence audit quality and is motivated by liability in the event of audit failure. The usefulness of audited financial reports for investors depends on both the quality of the underlying financial reporting (e.g., as embodied by GAAP) and the quality of auditors' reports (i.e., the likelihood with which audit evidence uncovers managerial misreporting). We show that audit quality disclosure increases auditors' effort incentives if and only if the underlying financial reporting quality is relatively weak. We also show that such disclosure can actually reduce investment efficiency. Our analyses contribute to the debate about policies aimed at improving audit transparency.