We analyze the disposition of auditor‐proposed adjustments to financial statements. Our analyses address concerns, expressed by regulators and others, that auditors and their clients fixate on quantitative thresholds and overlook qualitative factors in assessing the materiality of discovered misstatements. Using a large sample of Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)‐inspected audits, we examine the frequency with which management records versus waives auditor‐proposed adjustments and whether waiving‐proposed adjustments ha consequences for reporting reliability and the audit process. We find waived adjustments are linked to lower financial reporting quality measured by material misstatements, to incentives to meet/beat earnings targets, and to the audit process, as measured by higher next‐period audit effort and fees and higher next‐period proposed adjustments. These effects on the audit process are consistent with auditors responding to the increased risk associated with waived adjustments. In an exploratory analysis, we find that controlling for the amount of proposed adjustments, auditor resignations are negatively associated with waived adjustments.

We develop and validate an empirical measure of the informativeness of accounting assets in measuring firm-specific economic capital, an important determinant of both cash flows and intrinsic values. Our validation tests show that the asset informativeness measure is sensitive to differences in both accounting methods and implementation decisions at the firm level and corresponds to the way equity investors use the information in accounting assets. We find that accounting assets contain substantial information about firms' productive capacity (economic capital) and the information is not summarized in several earnings attributes often associated with earnings quality.