Name
From Assurance to Disclosures: How Audit Quality Shapes Managerial Narratives
Date & Time
Tuesday, July 7, 2026, 2:35 PM - 3:00 PM
Description

The objective of this paper is to investigate whether audit quality affects the contents and disclosures in earnings conference calls. We use a sample of 10,438 firm-year observations from US-listed firms between 2010 and 2019 to specifically investigate whether audit quality is associated with the information content and readability of earnings call transcripts. We find a negative association between audit quality and forward-looking statements (and the proportion of risk-related statements). However, consistent with our anticipation, we find a positive association between audit quality and the informative numbers (and the readability of the statements). The observed associations are more pronounced for high-complexity and dividend-paying firms. Our findings are robust to alternative proxies for earnings call contents and audit quality. The results suggest that audit quality affects content and disclosures in earnings conference calls.

Keywords
earnings conference calls, forward-looking statements, risk disclosures, readability, audit quality
Theme
AUDITING
Author 1
Md Mustafizur Rahaman