Accounting--Standards

I show that auditors experience cognitive dissonance when they fail to take appropriate professionally skeptical (hereafter PS) action in line with high PS judgment I specifically show that cognitive dissonance leads auditors to revise their attitudes on low ranking audit actions upward and lower their risk assessments, consequently, lower overall professional skepticism I also find that auditor cognitive dissonance leads to exaggerated ex-post auditor self-assessments professional skepticism Professional skepticism is fundamental to performing an audit according to auditing standards and critical to audit quality Extant research that investigates treatments to enhance professional skepticism predominantly treats both skeptical judgment and skeptical action as analogous outcomes of professional skepticism If, however, there is a breakdown between PS judgment and PS action, the overall benefits of these treatments will be trivial I show that cognitive dissonance due to the incongruence between PS judgments and PS actions leads to an unforeseeable corollary of lower overall professional skepticism I also demonstrate a specific mechanism of how auditor incentives lead to lower professional skepticism, hence, lower audit quality Both researchers and practitioners can benefit from this study by better understating the intricacies in the critical link between PS judgment and action Additionally, I provide an empirical investigation of the components in Nelson’s (2009) model of professional skepticism and extend the model to reflect the intricacies between PS judgment and PS action I test my hypotheses via a three-group research design with attitude change as a proxy measure of cognitive dissonance

This study examines whether accounting standards or institutional factors are the prime determinants of differences in value relevance of accounting numbers across countries. The motivation for this study arises from ongoing accounting harmonization efforts to increase the comparability of financial reporting across countries. Proponents of harmonization agree that investors support the need for comparability. Opponents, on the other hand, argue that efforts toward a common set of accounting standards worldwide may not achieve comparability as long as economical, cultural, and political differences exist across countries. So, the question is whether the application of common accounting standards result in enhanced comparability of financial statements, given that firms operate in different countries with different regulatory and cultural influences. This study examines the relationship between reported financial figures and both stock prices and returns across Saudi, Kuwait, the U.S., and U.S. listed firms that use international accounting standards (IAS-sample) to determine whether there are differences in the value relevance of their accounting numbers. Saudi and Kuwait have similar environments. However, they use different GAAPs. Saudi uses U.S. GAAP and Kuwait uses IAS. As a benchmark, this study uses samples of firms that use U.S. GAAP, and that use IAS, with both samples listing in the U.S. capital market. To determine whether accounting standards play a large role in differences in value relevance across these countries, four comparisons are performed: (1) Saudi and the U.S.; (2) Kuwait and IAS-sample; (3) Saudi and Kuwait; and (4) the U.S. and IAS-sample. The results show that there are significant differences in the value relevance between countries that apply the same standards but have different institutional factors. On the other hand, there are no significant differences, in most cases, in the value relevance between countries that apply different standards but operate in a similar environment. Moreover, this study attempts to determine whether earnings conservatism differs across these countries. This study provides evidence that institutional factors affect the differences in earnings conservatism. The findings of this study suggest that international harmonization of accounting standards may not be easily accomplished because institutional factors play an influential role in information dissemination.