Financial restatements and auditor quality

This thesis examines the association between auditor quality and the likelihood of financial restatements for Australian listed companies. I focus on two types of restatements: error-based restatements, which are financial restatements to correct a prior-period error-based misstatement, and stealth restatements, which are restatements made without qualitative disclosures required by the regulation. I document that 32%, 23% and 1.9% of Australian listed companies made restatements, stealth restatements and error-based restatements respectively in my sample of 1,465 Australian listed companies in the 2012/2013 reporting period. I construct an Error Restatement Model and a Stealth Restatement Model to examine the effects of auditor quality and auditor quality changes on the likelihood of different types of restatements. I find some evidence that prior-period auditor quality, measured by whether an auditor is a Big 4 audit firm, is associated with a lower likelihood of a current-period error-based restatement. However, a change in auditor to a Big 4 audit firm (or to an industry specialist audit firm) is associated with a higher likelihood of an error-based restatement arising from the first year audit engagement. I find evidence that higher auditor quality, measured by whether an auditor is an industry specialist audit firm, is associated with a lower likelihood of a stealth restatement and that a change in auditor increases the likelihood of a stealth restatement, but no evidence that higher quality auditors are more effective at detecting or deterring client restatements without qualitative disclosures in first year audit engagements.

Grantor dc:publisher

UNSW, Sydney

Year dc:date

2017

Author dc:creator

• Chiu, Yi-Hsuan

• Financial restatements
• Audit

Statement dc:rights

• open access
• CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
• free_to_read

Licence

• https://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/

Language dc:language

EN

Identifier

https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/20204

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:unsworks.library.unsw.edu.au:1959.4/59302