ABSTRACT We examine how the shifting of legal liability between auditors and clients affects financial reporting quality. We exploit the state-level adoption and rejection of a common law doctrine, the Audit Interference Rule (AIR), which shifts legal liability between auditors and clients, while not affecting total legal liability. The likelihood of restatements declines following staggered rejections of the AIR that shift risk to clients. Path analysis indicates that audit fees increase following AIR rejections, suggesting that relatively greater liability exposure for clients leads to a greater demand for assurance services that, in turn, reduces the likelihood of restatements. We further find greater improvements in financial reporting quality following the rejections of the AIR among clients with higher litigation risk and larger clients. Broadly, we provide novel evidence that clients’ incentives relating to increased liability exposure appear to dominate auditors’ disincentives relating to decreased liability exposure on financial reporting quality. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: K15; M41; M42.

中文翻译：

---

过失和财务报告质量的相对责任风险：来自审计干扰规则的证据


摘要我们研究审计师和客户之间法律责任的转移如何影响财务报告质量。我们利用州一级对普通法原则“审计干扰规则”(AIR) 的采用和拒绝，该规则在审计师和客户之间转移了法律责任，同时不影响总体法律责任。在 AIR 被交错拒绝后，重述的可能性就会下降，从而将风险转移给客户。路径分析表明，审计费用在 AIR 被拒绝后增加，这表明客户相对较大的责任风险会导致对鉴证服务的更大需求，从而降低重述的可能性。我们进一步发现，在诉讼风险较高和规模较大的客户中，在 AIR 被拒绝后，财务报告质量有了更大的提高。总体而言，我们提供了新颖的证据，表明客户与增加负债风险相关的激励措施似乎主导了审计师与减少财务报告质量责任风险相关的抑制因素。数据可用性：数据可从文中引用的公共来源获得。 JEL 分类：K15； M41； M42。