Audit Quality and the Pricing of Discretionary Accruals
研究发现，由六大会计师事务所审计的公司，其股票回报与可操控应计利润的关联更强，且这些公司的可操控应计利润更能预测未来盈利能力，表明高质量审计能提升应计利润的信息含量。
Accrual-based earnings is considered superior to cash flows. Accruals allow managers to communicate their private and inside information and thereby improve the ability of earnings to reflect underlying economic value. However, managers could engage in aggressive reporting of accruals that would seriously undermine the informativeness of reported earnings. Since outsiders cannot directly observe earnings, high-accrual firms face greater agency costs relative to low-accrual firms. Auditing plays an important role in mitigating these agency costs by constraining opportunistic management of accruals. This study examines whether there is a linkage between audit quality and pricing of discretionary accruals. The findings indicate that the association between stock returns and discretionary accruals is greater for firms audited by Big 6 auditors than for firms audited by non-Big 6 auditors. Further, discretionary accruals of clients of Big 6 auditors have a greater association with future profitability than discretionary accruals of clients of non-Big 6 auditors.