中文摘要：

审计的及时与否不仅是审计效率高低的直接表现形式，也是制约上市公司年度报告及时披露的“瓶颈”。以沪市A股公司2002—2004年披露的1990份审计报告为样本，对审计及时性的变化趋势以及影响因素进行了分析和检验，结果表明，在研究期间内审计及时性呈现逐年弱化趋势，股权结构以及消息因素是影响审计报告及时性的主要因素，而大公司对事务所的激励效应以及事务所规模效应在统计上不显著。因此，从审计时滞对年报披露时间具有重要影响的角度看，目前缩短年报披露期限的时机尚不成熟，从长远来看，进一步完善公司治理结构、提高注册会计师队伍的执业水平、提高事务所审计效率才是强化年报及时性的重要路径。

英文摘要：

Audit timeliness is not only a direct expressive form of audit efficiency, but a bottle-neck governing the timely release of the annual report of Chinese Listed Companies as well. Using the audit reports of 1990 Chinese companies issuing A-Share on the Shanghai Stock Exchange over the year 2002 - 2004 as examples, this paper has made analysis and test on the changing tendency and affecting factors of audit timeliness. The results indicate that during the study period, the audit timeliness shows a tendency of year-by-year weakening with the audit report lag increasing by 3 days each year. The ownership structure and surplus news factors are main factors affecting the timeliness of the audit report. The motivation effects of the big listed companies on accounting firms and the scale effects of the latter are not conspicuously statistically. As a result, viewing from the angle that the audit lag has a significant impact on the release time of the annual report, the chance to shorten the relapse period of the annual report is still not mature. Instead, consummating the corporate governance structure of listed companies, and improving the CPA auditing level to enhance the audit efficiency should serve as important measures to strengthen the timeliness of the annual report in the long run.