When we examine all firms in the sample we find that short-term debt is positively associated with earnings management consistent with some prior studies and the debt hypothesis. However, when we focus on high creditworthy (investment grade) firms we find a negative relation between short-term...

This study investigates the association between analysts' forecast properties (accuracy and dispersion) and audit fee pricing in U.S. publicly listed firms for years 2000 to 2012. Our findings provide evidence that analysts' earnings forecast accuracy (dispersion) is negatively (positively)...