Financial Reporting, Auditing, Analyst Scrutiny, and Investment Efficiency
构建经济框架研究分析师-审计师-企业主之间的战略互动，发现分析师监督虽能事后发现错报，但事前可能加剧错报行为并损害报表可靠性，且法律惩罚力度对投资效率的影响取决于分析师独立性及监管严格程度。
ABSTRACT This paper presents an economic framework to study strategic interactions along the analyst-auditor-owner disciplinary chain, in which the auditor examines the financial reports prepared by the owner, and the analyst uncovers financial misreporting, as well as audit failure. We find that although analyst scrutiny ex post detects misreporting, it ex ante aggravates the owner's misreporting behavior and further impairs financial statement reliability if the legal penalties for the auditor and the owner are small. We also show how the effects of a regulation depend on its target's disciplinarian(s). Specifically, (1) although enhancing the auditor's legal liability always increases audit quality and financial statement reliability, it decreases investment efficiency if and only if the analyst is highly independent, and (2) increasing the owner's misreporting penalty decreases investment efficiency if and only if either of (but not both) the regulations on the auditor and the analyst are strict. JEL Classifications: M41; M42; M48.