Are All Audits Born Equal?

Journal of Applied Research in Accounting and Finance (JARAF), Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 21-32, 2007

15 Pages Posted: 5 Sep 2007

See all articles by Tyrone M. Carlin

Tyrone M. Carlin

Southern Cross University

Nigel Finch

Saki Partners

Guy Ford

Macquarie University - Graduate School of Management

Abstract

By convention, the quality of an audit is understood to relate to the joint probability that its conduct results in the detection and reporting of material financial statement errors. Early research into this phenomenon suggested a positive relationship between audit firm size and audit quality. This has resulted in a plethora of studies in which a fundamental element of the research design has been to segment data samples into portions relating to large and small audit firms and to test for evidence of audit quality differences apparently associated with the size of the firm conducting the audit.

Many such studies have concluded that larger audit firms do indeed provide higher quality audit services. Typically however, the quality of audit services provided by large firms (of which there are very few) has been assumed to be or treated as homogenous. While the collapse of Arthur Andersen lead to some work which questioned this approach, on the whole, the large firm homogenous quality assumption stands.

This paper examines the quality of disclosures pertaining to the high risk issue of goodwill impairment testing made by a sample of large Australian listed corporations in the first year after their transition to A-IFRS. All firms in the sample were clients of Big 4 auditors. However, disclosure quality and compliance levels varied substantially, with audit firm identity appearing to explain a substantial proportion of observed cross sectional variation.

Keywords: Audit quality, IFRS, impairment, Big 4, goodwill

JEL Classification: M49, M41, M44, M47, G12

Suggested Citation

Carlin, Tyrone M. and Finch, Nigel and Ford, Guy, Are All Audits Born Equal?. Journal of Applied Research in Accounting and Finance (JARAF), Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 21-32, 2007, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1012237

Tyrone M. Carlin (Contact Author)

Southern Cross University ( email )

Military Road
Lismore, New South Wales 2480
Australia

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.scu.edu.au/about/vice-chancellor/

Nigel Finch

Saki Partners ( email )

Australia

Guy Ford

Macquarie University - Graduate School of Management ( email )

99 Talavera Road
Sydney, NSW 2113
Australia
+61-2-9850-7813 (Phone)
+61-2-9850-9019 (Fax)

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