Relação entre audit report lag e gerenciamento de resultados

Abstract

Faced with a scenario of discretionary accounting choices and timely and reliable reporting requirements, the role of independent auditors becomes very important for companies and for the market. In this sense an important metric is being studied, the audit report lag, which is the difference, in days, from the end of the calendar year of a company until the date of presentation of the audit report. Several factors may influence audit report lag, and the level of earnings management was what guided this study, in order to answer the following research question: What is the relationship between audit report lag and earnings management in companies listed in B3? However, as the earnings management in companies is not directly observable, this study used the model of Kothari et al. (2005) to estimate discretionary accruals, widely diffused and used as a proxy to measure the level of earnings management in companies. To investigate the relationship between earnings management and audit report lag, a panel data model was drawn up, with data from Brazilian companies listed in B3 from 2010 to 2017. The variable explained in the model was the audit report lag, and based on previous work has identified other variables that could explain the dependent variable: the size of the audit firm, audit committee, audit opinion with qualification, providing non-audit services, time of relationship with the audit firm, financial leverage, company size and, finally, the level of earnings management, as evidenced by the discretionary accruals. After estimating the final regression model, it was verified that three variables were statistically significant to explain the audit report lag: the discretionary accruals, audit opinion with qualification and size of the company. In this way, it was concluded that the higher level of earnings management of a company's, measured by discretionary accruals, the more time the auditor will take to audit the financial statements. It was evidenced that having a qualified opinion positively affects the audit report lag, indicating that auditors take more time to provide advice on companies that have problems with their numbers. Finally, the variable size of the company has been shown to negatively influence the audit report lag, ie, the larger the company, the less time the auditors will take to audit it.