Do Managers Successfully Shop for Auditors Who Allow Them to Opportunistically Report Positive News? Evidence from Accounting Estimates
研究了管理者通过更换审计师来机会主义地报告好消息（收入增加的会计估计变更）的行为，发现更换后此类估计增加，且公司更易出现重述、收到SEC意见函等后果。
Prior auditor shopping literature examines managers’ attempts to opportunistically underreport negative news by finding auditors who will allow them to avoid negative audit opinions or underreport goodwill impairments or financial misstatements. We advance this literature by examining management attempts to opportunistically report positive news, as captured by income-increasing changes in accounting estimates. Adapting a previous framework, we find that, ex ante, managers are more (less) likely to dismiss their auditor if it increases (decreases) the expected likelihood of reporting income-increasing changes in accounting estimates (POSCHGs). We also find that, ex post, following auditor dismissals, the frequency and magnitude of POSCHGs increase, and companies reporting POSCHGs are more likely to restate earnings, receive Securities and Exchange Commission comment letters related to estimates, meet or beat earnings targets, and less likely to receive going concern opinions or violate debt covenants. Placebo tests show that none of the above results hold for income-decreasing changes in estimates. Finally, we identify several institutional factors that constrain managers’ ability to shop for lenient auditors, including the quality of the successor auditor and strong corporate governance. Collectively, our findings are consistent with managers successfully shopping for auditors who allow them to opportunistically report positive news following auditor dismissals. This paper was accepted by Ranjani Krishnan, accounting. Supplemental Material: The data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.05299 .