The Empirical Study On The Relationship Between Audit Reporting Lags And Audit Quality

The term "audit reporting lags" is used to refer to a specific time interval.Current research by scholars at home and abroad generally defines it as from the fiscal year deadline to the audit report signing date.From this definition,it can be seen that on the one hand,the audit reporting lags is related to the timeliness of the disclosure of the annual report of the listed company;on the other hand,it reflects the work input of the auditors from a time perspective and can be used as an alternative indicator to measure the audit input.The "Regulations on the Administration of Information Disclosure of Listed Companies" adopted by the China Securities Regulatory Commission on December 13,2006 requires implementation from January 30,2007,of which Article 19 and Article 20 clearly stipulate that The disclosure time is within4 months(approximately 120 days)from the end of each fiscal year.In contrast,the legal disclosure period of the United States,Japan,South Korea,and many emerging developing countries or regions does not exceed 90 days.This shows that China has a long audit reporting lags.As an alternative indicator of audit investment,the audit reporting lags will have an impact on the audit work results(that is,audit quality).Too short audit reporting lags(that is,the early issuance of an audit report)may have insufficient audit time,which will cause the auditor to fail to perform enough audit procedures to obtain sufficient and appropriate audit evidence,which will adversely affect the audit quality.Proper audit reporting lags may mean that auditors have sufficient time to perform the necessary audit procedures in accordance with the standards,and have a full understanding of future events related to the preparation of corporate financial statements.These audit inputs will have a positive impact on audit quality influences.Too long audit reporting lags(that is,when the audit report is issued close to or beyond the disclosure deadline)may mean that the auditor encountered difficulties in the audit work or there is a situation where it is impossible to reach agreement with the enterprise management.During the audit game with the management,the auditors may choose to compromise for the sake of customer retention or cost-effectiveness,appropriately abandon the audit quality,and as the reporting date approaches,affected by time pressure,the auditors There may also be acts that detract from the quality of the audit.From the perspective of theoretical significance and reality,this paper mainly studies the relationship between audit reporting lags and audit quality.Through empirical analysis,it is tested whether the audit reporting lags will have a certainimpact on audit quality.In order to meet the needs of research,this paper not only obtained the hypotheses of the relationship between the two through theoretical analysis,but also used empirical analysis results to prove these hypotheses.In terms of data selection,this paper uses the data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2013 to 2017 after the completion of the conversion of accounting firms in China as a research sample,and explores the impact of audit reporting lags on audit quality by establishing multiple regression equations.The research results show that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between audit reporting lags and audit quality,that is,within a certain time frame,audit quality will increase with the increase of the audit reporting lags.The increase in audit reporting lags will not only improve the audit quality,but will damage the audit quality,and the audit quality will gradually decline;and,compared with state-owned enterprises,this inverted U-shaped relationship is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises.This article consists of six parts.The first part is an introduction,which outlines the research background,significance,ideas,methods and basic framework of this article.The second part is a literature review,which analyzes and summarizes the domestic and foreign research literature related to audit reporting lags and audit quality.During this process,it is found that there are many studies on the influencing factors of audit reporting lags in existing studies.However,the audit reporting lags is used as an explanatory variable to discuss its impact on audit quality.At present,there are still few studies in China.This paper can carry out related research in this field.The third part mainly provides a theoretical overview.On the one hand,it elaborates on the theoretical basis related to audit reporting lags and audit quality.It also introduces the meaning and commonly used measurement methods of audit reporting lags and audit quality.The four basic theories are briefly discussed,including principal-agent theory,signal transmission theory,audit game theory and transaction cost theory.The fourth part puts forward two research hypotheses on the relationship between audit reporting lags and audit quality on the basis of theoretical analysis: one is that under other conditions unchanged,the audit reporting lags and audit quality are inverted U-shaped The second is that under other conditions unchanged,compared with state-owned enterprises,the inverted U-shaped relationship between audit reporting lags and audit quality is more significant in non-state-owned enterprises.The fifth part is the process and results of empirical testing.First,the research samples and relevant data sources selected for empirical testing are described.Second,the models constructed for hypothesis and the definition and measurement of each variable are introduced.Correlation test and analyze the results;Finally,analyze the results of multiple regression and do related robustness tests to ensure the reliability of the results.The sixth part is the conclusion and suggestion part of the full text,including summarizing the conclusions drawn through theoretical analysis and empirical testing in this paper,and recommending that policy makers,regulatory agencies,listed company management and accounting firms take relevant measures based on existing conclusions measures to improve audit quality.