ABSTRACTThis paper presents an economic framework to study strategic interactions along the analyst-auditor-owner disciplinary chain, in which the auditor examines the financial reports prepared by the owner, and the analyst uncovers financial misreporting, as well as audit failure. We find that although analyst scrutiny ex post detects misreporting, it ex ante aggravates the owner's misreporting behavior and further impairs financial statement reliability if the legal penalties for the auditor and the owner are small. We also show how the effects of a regulation depend on its target's disciplinarian(s). Specifically, (1) although enhancing the auditor's legal liability always increases audit quality and financial statement reliability, it decreases investment efficiency if and only if the analyst is highly independent, and (2) increasing the owner's misreporting penalty decreases investment efficiency if and only if either of (but not both) the regulations on the auditor and the analyst are strict.JEL Classifications: M41; M42; M48.

中文翻译：

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财务报告、审计、分析师审查和投资效率


摘要本文提出了一个经济框架来研究分析师-审计师-所有者纪律链上的战略互动，其中审计师检查所有者准备的财务报告，分析师揭露财务误报以及审计失败。我们发现，尽管分析师的事后审查发现了误报，但如果审计师和所有者受到的法律处罚较小，事前会加剧所有者的误报行为，并进一步损害财务报表的可靠性。我们还展示了监管的效果如何取决于其目标的纪律人员。具体来说，（1）虽然增强审计师的法律责任总是会提高审计质量和财务报表的可靠性，但当且仅当分析师高度独立时，它会降低投资效率；（2）增加所有者的误报处罚会降低投资效率当且仅当对审计师和分析师的任何一项（但不是两项）规定都很严格。JEL 分类：M41； M42； M48。