1. Introduction
This study examines how the internal control audit requirements of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board
Auditing Standard No. 2 (‘‘AS2’’; PCAOB, 2004b) and the audit documentation requirements of PCAOB Auditing Standard
No. 3 (‘‘AS3’’; PCAOB, 2004a) impacted the reliability of earnings information. While both PCAOB AS2 and AS3 were
expected to enhance the quality of the external audit, they also increased the amount of time required to complete the
audit. Consequently, many firms that routinely released preliminary earnings numbers after the completion of audit
fieldwork must now trade-off the market demand for timely information against a possible reduction in reliability due to
issuing preliminary earnings numbers prior to the audit report date.1
Using a large sample of annual earnings releases over the period 2000–2005, we find a discontinuity in the average
length of time between the fiscal year-end and the audit report date (‘‘audit report lag’’) that is concurrent with the