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The Accounting Review Vol. 90 No. 6 2015

Capital Market Consequences of Audit Partner Quality

Daniel Aobdia1; Chan-Jane Lin2; Reining Petacchi3

1 Northwestern University and PCAOB, Center for Economic Analysis · 2 National Taiwan University · 3 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Abstract

This paper examines whether the identity of the individual audit partners provides informational value to capital market participants beyond the value provided by the identity of the audit firms. Using data from Taiwan, where firms are mandated to disclose the names of the engagement partners, we find a positive association between the partner's quality and the client firm's earnings response coefficient. We also find a positive market reaction when a firm replaces a lower quality partner with a higher quality one. Moreover, we find evidence that firms audited by higher quality partners experience smaller initial public offering (IPO) underpricing and are able to obtain better debt contract terms. Overall, these results suggest that the quality of engagement partners matters to capital market participants.

DOI
10.2308/accr-51054
Volume
90
Issue
6
Pages
2143-2176
Language
en
Sources
openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

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