The timely publication of corporate financial information depends on the time taken to complete the audit. The audit report lag is a particularly critical factor in emerging and newly developed capital markets where the audited financial statements in the annual report are the only reliable source of information available to investors. This paper examines the audit report lag of companies listed on the Athens Stock Exchange at the time of its transition from an emerging market to a newly developed capital market. A statistically significant association is found between audit report lag and type of auditor, audit fees, number of remarks in the audit report, the presence of extraordinary items, and an expression of uncertainty in the audit report. The results suggest that audit report lag is reduced by appointing an international audit firm or paying a premium audit fee, but is extended by aspects of potentially bad news.
This paper responds to a call in the literature for methodological and empirical studies to advance research into accounting narratives, in the light of acknowledged areas of weakness and gaps in the accounting literature and with a view to investigating impression management. A general line of critique in the accounting literature points to a need to expand both the syntactic and thematic dimensions, with a particular focus on developing objective methods of analysis that allow computer‐based measurement. The paper draws on the literature of managerial business communications, supported by that of applied linguistics, in bringing to accounting research a transitivity index and the application of DICTION analysis. Both have the potential to extend computer‐based analysis of accounting narratives, subject to careful initial research design and specification. The potential for a richer empirical analysis is demonstrated through an illustrative empirical application.
Readability formulas have been criticised as a method for scoring accounting narratives because of their focus on word-and sentence-level features and not on whole-text aspects, their lack of regard for the interests and motivation of the reader, and their inappropriateness for evaluating adult-based and technical accounting narratives. The literature of linguistics offers theoretical and practical validation for application of a texture index which addresses these criticisms. The paper shows how the general model drawn from applied linguistics can be tailored to the specific situation of an accounting narrative ± the Operating and Financial Review. Rules which provide for objectivity in replication are specified and illustrated for a sample narrative. Illustrative empirical analysis shows that there is no evidence of association with the Flesch readability score. This suggests that the texture index is potentially a powerful tool for analysis of accounting narratives and association testing.
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