In this paper, we investigate the consequences that auditors and their clients face when earnings announced in an unaudited earnings release are subsequently revised, presumably as a result of year-end audit procedures, so that earnings as reported in the 10-K differ from earnings as previously...

We examine whether delays in the expected release of annual earnings have implications for the future auditor-client relationship. Managers have strong incentives to release earnings on schedule and auditors play an important role in helping their clients avoid costly earnings announcement...

Prior studies use fundamental earnings forecasts to proxy for the market's expectations of earnings because analyst forecasts are biased and are available for only a subset of firms. We find that as a proxy for market expectations, fundamental forecasts contain systematic measurement errors...