An International Meeting of the American Accounting Association American Accounting Association 2006 Annual Meeting August 6–9, 2006 Washington, D.C.

Jayanthi Krishnan
Temple University

Joon S. Yang
University of Minnesota Duluth

Abstract: The SEC has recently introduced accelerated filing requirements for 10-Ks and 10-Qs. The major accounting firms and some companies objected to the acceleration, arguing that recent changes in financial reporting and disclosure requirements, corporate governance, and auditing standards, will make it difficult to meet the shorter deadlines. We examine the audit report lag and the earnings announcement lag and find that both lags increased during 2000-2002 as well as in 2003 when the new filing requirements took effect. Thus, despite the need to file statements more quickly than before in 2003, companies announced their earnings later and auditors completed their work later than they had in previous years. When we examine firms for which both the audit lag and earnings announcement lags are available, we find that the likelihood that companies will announce earnings prior to the audit report date has increased over the period 2000-2003.

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