نزدیکی جغرافیایی حسابرس و مشتری و به موقع بودن گزارش حسابرسی Auditor-client geographic proximity and audit report timeliness

1. Introduction Information timeliness is an important quality in assessing the usefulness of audited financial reports and has been a longstanding concern of regulators, shareholders, analysts, managers, and auditors. The extant research documents a heightened market reaction to timely audited financial reports (Chambers & Penman, 1984), and penalties for firms with late audited financial reports (e.g.Alford, Jones, & Zmijewski, 1994; Bartov & Konchitchki, 2017; Griffin, 2003). Regulators’ concerns that investors have access to timely financial reports are reflected in initiatives such as the institution of EDGAR, the acceleration of 10-K/10-Q filing deadlines for larger companies, and the adoption of XBRL. Since the timeliness of audited financial statements is a function of the timeliness of the audit report, improvements in audit report timeliness could have a significant impact on the timeliness of audited financial reports. However, recent changes in the regulatory and corporate reporting environment have increased the difficulty of providing timely audited financial reports (Bronson, Hogan, Johnson, & Ramesh, 2011; Krishnan & Yang, 2009), therefore increasing the salience of research identifying the factors that affect audit report timeliness. In this study we investigate the association between auditor-client geographic proximity and audit delay, defined as the number of calendar days from fiscal year-end to the audit report date (Ashton, Willingham, & Elliott, 1987; Bronson et al., 2011; Krishnan & Yang, 2009; Whitworth & Lambert, 2014).1 Our focus on audit report timeliness is further motivated by evidence from the extant research that longer audit reporting delays are associated with lower financial reporting quality (Blankley, Hurtt, & MacGregor, 2014; Kinney Jr & McDaniel, 1993).