Determinants of Earnings Announcement Timeliness and of Audit Lag: A Two-Stage Estimation Approach

Abstract

This study examines the behaviour of firms with respect to their choice of the date when their preliminary earnings are announced; as well, this study attempts to determine the factors that influence the timeliness of earnings announcements. Factors that are assumed to influence the earnings announcement timeliness include the nature of the news, the magnitude of the demand for information, regulation and audit technology. The results of our study suggest that firms are fairly regular and typically announce their earnings within an average seven day period. However, it seems that the nature of their announcement could alter this regularity. Canadian firms tend to delay the announcement of bad news and to announce good news early. As for determining the announcement delay, firm specific variables ? size, cross-listing on more than one stock exchanges, the nature of the firm?s auditor, the fiscal year end, and operating in the financial sector ? all seem to reduce the earnings announcement delay. Two-stage lest squares regressions confirm the robustness of our results.

JEL Classification: M41, M43, M49