The Effect of Lame Duck Auditors on Management Discretion: An Empirical Analysis
研究发现，在审计师与客户关系终止后仍继续完成后续季度审查的“跛脚鸭审计师”情况下，财务报告质量更高，表明审计师进行了更严格的季度审查，这归因于审计师独立性增强或声誉担忧加剧。
SUMMARY We identify instances in which the auditor-client relationship has been terminated but the auditor continues to complete a subsequent quarterly review. We refer to these instances as “lame duck auditor” quarters, and we contrast financial reporting quality in these quarters with that in non-lame duck auditor quarters. Using discretionary accruals and financial statement misstatements as proxies for financial reporting quality, we find that financial reporting quality is higher in lame duck auditor situations, suggesting that lame duck auditors perform more stringent quarterly reviews. We attribute these results to improvements in auditor independence and/or heightened reputation concerns. We perform a number of tests to alleviate concerns that our results are attributable to fundamental differences between clients with lame duck auditors and clients with non-lame duck auditors and to alleviate concerns that our results are attributable to changes in manager behavior rather than changes in auditor behavior. Collectively, our results provide insights that are relevant to regulators, auditors, and other stakeholders who are interested in the factors that affect auditor independence and financial reporting quality. Data Availability: The data used are publicly available from the sources cited in the text.