This study investigates whether PCAOB inspections of foreign auditors affect global financial reporting comparability. Foreign auditors may adjust audit methodologies to address PCAOB inspection findings, which could affect financial reporting of local clients. Exploiting both within- and cross-country variation in PCAOB inspections, we predict and find that non-US-listed foreign companies' financial reporting becomes more comparable to their US and non-US industry peers after their auditors undergo an initial inspection. However, there is a decrease in comparability compared to local peers whose auditors have not been inspected. Subsample tests suggest that the improvement in comparability is driven by (i) auditors that satisfactorily address deficiencies and (ii) auditors that do not publicly push back against deficiencies. The effects are dampened after local audit regulators begin inspection programs. Overall, our evidence suggests that the PCAOB international inspection program affects audit methodologies of inspected auditors in a consistent way, improving comparability across jurisdictions. The improved comparability implies that the PCAOB international inspection program may unintentionally help meet accounting regulators' goals of cross-country financial reporting convergence, which potentially promotes efficient cross-country capital allocation.

中文翻译：

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PCAOB 对外国审计师的检查是否会影响全球财务报告的可比性？*

本研究调查了 PCAOB 对外国审计师的检查是否会影响全球财务报告的可比性。外国审计师可能会调整审计方法以解决 PCAOB 的检查结果，这可能会影响本地客户的财务报告。利用 PCAOB 检查的国内和跨国差异，我们预测并发现非美国上市的外国公司的财务报告在其审计师接受初步检查后变得与美国和非美国同行的财务报告更具可比性。然而，与审计师未经检查的当地同行相比，可比性有所下降。子样本测试表明，可比性的提高是由（i）令人满意地解决缺陷的审计师和（ii）不公开反对缺陷的审计师推动的。在当地审计监管机构开始检查计划后，影响会减弱。总体而言，我们的证据表明，PCAOB 国际检查计划以一致的方式影响受检查审计师的审计方法，提高了不同司法管辖区的可比性。改进的可比性意味着 PCAOB 国际检查计划可能会无意中帮助实现会计监管机构的跨国财务报告趋同目标，这可能会促进有效的跨国资本配置。