Effect of Auditor Partner's Busyness on Audit Quality, Auditor Report Delays, and Capital Cost

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Professor of Accounting, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Iran

2 M.Sc., Accounting, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Iran

3 M. Sc, Accounting, Azad University, Kerman, Iran

10.22051/jera.2023.43927.3138

Abstract

Our purpose in this research is to investigate the impact of the auditor's partner's busyness on audit quality, auditor's report delay, and capital cost. There are two views in this regard. A group believes that the workload of the auditor's partner increases the experience and knowledge of the auditor and the effectiveness of the audit increases (Gol et al., 2017). Another group believes that the busyness of the auditor's partner causes the delay of the audit and a reduction in the quality of the audit (De Fond and Zhang, 2014). On the other hand, the workload of the auditor's partner increases the cost of capital (Habib et al., 2018). In this research, we intend to examine the stated cases. To check the hypotheses, we used the data of 165 companies during the period from 2011 to 2014. The regression method used is multivariate regression. To measure the busyness of the auditor's partner, alternative measures are the ratio of the number of audit work of the institution to the number of partners of the institution, the ratio of the logarithm of the income of the audit institution to the number of partners of the audit institution, and the ratio of the market share, for audit quality from the adjusted model of Jones (1991) and the cost of capital. We used the relation of Stone (2004). To according the findings, the first, second, and third hypotheses were confirmed and the preoccupation of the auditor's partner has a positive and significant relationship with the delay of the auditor's report and the cost of capital, and a negative and significant relationship with audit quality. The preoccupation of the audit partners causes the auditor's report to be delayed, reduces the quality of the audit, and increases the cost of capital

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Main Subjects


 
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