The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of audit quality, measured by financial statements audited by the auditing organization, on the investors’ ability to predict future earnings for profitable and unprofitable firms.
The paper uses the returns-earnings regression model and interacts all independent variables in this model with a dummy variable, AUDIT, which is set to equal one if financial statements audited by the auditing organization, zero otherwise. Future earnings response coefficient is the measure of earnings predictability.
The findings of the paper on the listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange for the period of 2001-2010, indicate that financial statements audited by the auditing organization are arguably of higher quality than those audited by non- auditing organization. Additionally, the investors’ ability improved to predict future earnings for profitable than unprofitable firms.