Early Earnings Releases and the Role of Accounting Quality
研究了会计质量如何影响美国上市公司在审计完成前提前发布盈余公告的决策，发现会计质量越高，公司越可能提前发布，且市场需求高时这一关系更强。
SUMMARY More than half of U.S. public companies announce earnings before audit completion. We examine how accounting quality, as a measure of the ex ante reliability of earnings, affects the decision to release earnings early. Using four proxies for accounting quality, we show that firms with higher accounting quality are more likely to release earnings before a completed audit, and that the association is stronger when market demand for timely earnings is high. We provide evidence that accounting quality remains important in the timing of earnings release even after controlling for other factors which affect earnings reliability, such as managerial ability, auditor tenure, and financial reporting problems in a prior period. Overall, we emphasize the role of accounting quality in the complex process of when to release earnings relative to audit completion and suggest that the importance of the audit in the earnings release decision varies based on firm-specific accounting quality. Data Availability: All data are publicly available from the sources identified in this paper. JEL Classifications: M40; M41; M42.