The Information Content of the Uncertainty-Modified Audit Report: Evidence from Rank Loan Officers.
通过实验研究，发现不确定性修正审计报告会影响银行贷款官员的风险评估、利率溢价和贷款决策，其信息含量主要来自独立的“第二意见”。
Abstract The effectiveness of the audit report in communicating with financial statement users has been the subject of on-going debate. One element of this debate is the incremental role for an explanatory paragraph in the audit report when the client has already provided the required financial statement disclosures. We examine this issue in a controlled experiment designed to investigate the uncertainty-modified audit report's information content for a specific user group: bank loan officers. The results, based on the responses of 77 bank loan officers, suggest that the uncertainty-modified audit report (SAS No. 58, AICPA 1988) influenced the loan officers' risk assessment, the interest rate premium, and the decision whether or not to grant the loan. The study also provides some evidence that the modified report's information content derives from the independent ‘second opinion’ provided by the report, rather than from directing loan officers' attention to particular financial statement elements. These results suggest that bank loan officers find the modified audit report informative. Combined with evidence from prior capital markets studies on this issue, our results raise questions concerning the Auditing Standards Board's decision to eliminate the uncertainty modification for all but going-concern uncertainties.