Perceived Auditor Quality and the Earnings Response Coefficient.
检验了审计师规模（八大与非八大）是否影响投资者对盈余意外的反应，发现八大审计客户的盈余反应系数显著更高，支持审计师规模作为可信度代理的假设。
Abstract An auditor's reputation lends credibility to the earnings report that he audits. An unresolved issue is whether auditor size is correlated with auditor quality, where a high-quality auditor is defined as one who brings about more credible earnings reports. According to basic intuition and a modified Holthausen-Verrecchia (1988) model, investors' response to an earnings surprise will depend on the perceived credibility of the earnings report. In this study, we examine whether the earnings response coefficient (ERC) differs between Big Eight (B8) and non-Big Eight (NB8) audited firms. This provides a test of the joint hypotheses that auditor size is a proxy for auditor credibility and of the modified H-V model. Consistent with the joint hypotheses, we find that the ERCs of Big Eight clients are statistically significantly higher than for non-Big Eight clients. The result obtains in both a matched sample of firms paired according to industry membership, and a switch sample of firms grouped according to shifts from and to B8 and NB8 auditors. Furthermore, the result is robust with respect to the inclusion of other explanatory factors for ERG that have been suggested by previous studies: growth and persistence, risk, firm size, and predisclosure information environment.