Search results for "Audit quality"
showing 6 items of 6 documents
Struggle over joint audit: on behalf of public interest?
2012
International audience; European Commission (EC 2011) has recently suggested joint audit - broadly defined as an audit where two independent auditors are jointly liable for the audit report - as a way a way to increase audit quality after the financial crisis and to mitigate audit market concentration, by enlarging the audit offer. Big 4 audit firms have fought this proposal by arguing its unbearable cost while 2nd Tier audit firms have supported it by arguing its added quality. This conflicting position leads us to question their claim of public interest concern. As group-interest economic regulation theories predict that the absence of any effect of a new regulation (here: joint audit) is…
The origin of the auditor’s income and audit quality : the Spanish case
2022
Estudios previos señalan la existencia de una relación entre la especialización del auditor y la calidad de la auditoría. A partir de esta idea, cuanto más importante sea la actividad de auditoría en el total del negocio de la firma auditora y mayor especialización exista en dicha actividad, el auditor firmante adoptará una postura más conservadora en la emisión de su informe. Utilizando la materialidad cuantitativa como subrogado de la calidad, se examina el efecto que los honorarios por otros servicios distintos a los de auditoría y el peso de los socios firmantes en la firma tienen sobre la cifra de materialidad. Partiendo de la materialidad real utilizada en cada uno de los encargos com…
Audit fees and earnings management: differences based on the type of audit
2020
In spite of the extensive research about the impact of audit fees on audit quality, there is no research examining if the association between voluntary audits and audit pricing affects audit quality. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to empirically examine whether the effect of audit fees on audit quality, measured by the level of earnings management, is affected by the type of audit (voluntary vs mandatory), as well as whether the effect of audit fees on audit quality is different depending on the type of audit. Using a sample of Spanish SMEs composed of both voluntarily and mandatorily audited companies, we find that voluntary audits have higher quality when audit fees are lower, but th…
Audit Quality and Corporate Governance: Evidence from the Microfinance Industry
2012
This study uses a unique, hand-collected sample of microfinance institutions from 73 countries that typically are not investigated in accounting research to analyze the relationships between audit quality and governance mechanisms. We examine two measures of audit quality, namely, the use of Big Four auditors and the presence of internal auditors who report to the boards of these institutions. The empirical analysis of this study reveals that these two quality metrics are highly related, although we also demonstrate that these metrics capture distinctive aspects of audit quality. In particular, the presence of internal auditors is related to other indicators of stricter governance, whereas …
External investigations and disciplinary sanctions against auditors: the impact on audit quality
2015
In this paper, we provide empirical evidence for the impact of disciplinary sanctions imposed on Spanish auditing firms and their engagement partners. The disciplinary sanctions resulted from external investigations, which revealed misapplications of auditing standards. In particular, we evaluate (a) the efficacy of the external supervisory board in identifying low-quality auditors and (b) the effectiveness of the disciplinary system in improving the quality of subsequent statutory audits performed by the sanctioned auditors. We employ two earnings management indicators as proxies for audit quality: loss avoidance through extraordinary items and abnormal accruals. And we compare these measu…
Changes and Challenges Facing the Audit Profession in Latvia
2014
Abstract The history of certified auditing and audit services in the Latvian market has now existed for twenty years. It is not a long period of time when compared to other countries and the history of the audit profession. However, during these twenty years the audit profession in Latvia has experienced dynamic development along with a positive trend in the Latvian audit market. The main purpose of this paper is to describe the audit profession in Latvia and assess the expected impact of changes on the audit market by evaluating audit quality management, mainly focusing on the situation since Latvia's accession to the EU, with particular reference to the problems related to the development…