Topic: What Do Auditors' Opinions Tell Us about Long-Term Macroeconomic Activity?

Speaker: Scott Joslin, Associate Professor of Finance and Business Economics, USC Marshall School of Business

Date: November 14 (Wednesday)

Time: 10:00-11:30am

Location: Building 4 Room 101

Language: English

Abstract:

This paper proposes and validates the macro-audit hypothesis, an equilibrium theory of a relationship between a form of default intensities the aggregate frequency of going concern opinions and the macro economy, where auditors' access to private information across firms  (through exposure to accounting data across their client firms) provides superior information about long-term economic risk and growth. More specially, motivated by economic framework that builds on features of firms' audit processes and the corporate sector's role in the macro economy, we posit and show that going concern opinions from firms' financial reports provide useful information not only about the likelihood and severity of firm default but also about long-term macroeconomic activity. We also show that key capital markets players do not fully incorporate predictive information embedded in going concern opinions. Overall, this paper is the first to shed light on the link between audit information in firm-level financial reports and the macro economy.

About the speaker:

Scott Joslin is an associate professor of Finance and Business Economics at USC Marshall School of Business. His research focuses on asset pricing and related econometric methods with applications to fixed income and options. He teaches elective courses on fixed income and risk management in addition to finance in the online MBA program.  Prior to coming to USC, Dr. Joslin was an assistant professor at MIT Sloan School of Management. He received his Ph.D. in finance from Stanford Graduate School of Business.