Can New Auditing Standards Improve the Information Environment of the Capital Market? Based on the Accuracy of Analyst Earnings Forecast

Abstract

Traditional audit reports express audit opinions only by standardized texts, which makes them lack of value. In December 2016, the Ministry of Finance issues 12 new auditing standards, which include Communication of Key Audit Matters in the Independent Audit Reports, aiming to improve the information of audit reports and to reduce the information gap between companies and investors. A+H share listed companies are required to implement the new auditing standards from January 1, 2017. Many scholars study the impact of the new auditing standards on audit report users, such as investors, auditors, etc. (Louis-Philippe, et al., 2014; Christensen, et al., 2014; Wang and Li, 2019). Compared with general report users, analysts as information seekers and interpreters of the capital market (Chen and Liu, 2017), are more professional and sensitive to accounting and auditing information. Due to the high cost of private information acquisition for majority analysts, public information, such as annual reports and audit reports, is the primary source of information. The new auditing standards require auditors to disclose more audit information, especially the disclosure of key audit matters. It improves the information environment of the capital market by increasing the disclosure of the select reason of key audit matters, how to deal with them and the specific audit procedures. Then, can the implementation of the new auditing standards improve the information environment of the capital market by requiring auditors to provide more audit information, which in turn affects the accuracy of analysts’ earnings forecast? Based on the differences in the time and scope of the implementation of the new auditing standards, we use a difference-in-differences model to study the impact of the implementation of the new auditing standards on the accuracy of analysts’ earnings forecast. The study finds that the implementation of the new auditing standards improve the accuracy of analysts’ earnings forecast at the firm level, and the more key audit matters are disclosed in audit reports, the more significant this effect is. Further analysis shows that: (1) The implementation of the new auditing standards mainly reduces analysts’ optimistic bias forecast. (2) The implementation of the new auditing standards improves analysts’ earnings forecast accuracy at the individual level. (3) The implementation effect of the new auditing standards is more significant in companies with low information transparency. The contributions of this paper are as follows: (1) Using the exogenous event of auditing standard reform, this paper confirms that institutional changes can improve the information environment of the capital market, and further improves the accuracy of analysts’ earnings forecast, which enriches the relevant literature on the influencing factors of analysts’ behaviors (Bradshaw, et al., 2010; Wang and Wang, 2012). (2) This paper provides new empirical evidence on the policy effect of the implementation of the new auditing standards (Lu and Zhang, 2018; Wang, et al., 2018; Wang and Li, 2019), and responds to Defond and Zhang (2014) for the awareness of new audit reports and their value. (3) The documents on analysts are lack of study at the individual level, while this paper provides an analysis of heterogeneity at the individual level, which complements the research on individual analysts and their predictive behaviors. (4) This paper gives a positive evaluation of the new auditing standards’ implementation effect, and provides references and suggestions for the follow-up improvement of the auditing standards. This paper verifies the impact of the implementation of the new auditing standards on the information environment of the capital market. It has some implications for policy-makers and analysts. On the one hand, the conclusions of this paper are helpful for policy-makers to evaluate the policy effect of the new auditing standards. On the other hand, there are some implications for analysts. First, improve the ability of analysts themselves, so as to enhance the influence of analysts in the capital market. Second, strengthen the overall construction of the analyst industry, enhance the overall capacity of the industry, and ensure the healthy development of the analyst industry.