Improvements In Audit Report Lag And Reporting Timeliness: A Non-Event For Technology Advances

Abstract

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Technological advances have transformed the professional lives of all accountants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Consequential expectations would include improvements in the timing of the audit report and the reporting of financial information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>There is a presumption in the empirical literature that audit report lag is a primary cause of financial reporting delay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>This empirical research study finds little or no change in the audit report lag and timeliness of reporting during the period 1996 to 2001.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Audit report lag appears to play a questionable role, if any, in financial reporting delays and other factors such as inertia and interest may be the major impediments to timely reporting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Finally, given the financial atmosphere after the Enron-Arthur Andersen debacle, our research finds no difference among auditing firms for the variables examined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>While this could be interpreted in a positive manner, it could also indicate that all Big-5 firms potentially have similar problems.</span></span></p>