Abstract
This study introduces a novel metric of audit expertise—the co-signing experience of a lead partner with other partners over the past five years—to explore its impact on audit quality. Our findings show that co-signing experience positively influences audit quality, evidenced by positive associations with modified audit opinions and negative associations with absolute discretionary current accruals and bank loan spreads. Such effects appear mainly for less experienced partners co-signing with experienced partners and are more pronounced for clients with highly complex audits. In addition, our results indicate that lead partners benefit not only from co-signing with “masters” (industry specialists) but also from non-masters (non-specialists). Together, these insights broaden partner-level research by highlighting new perspectives on the influence of co-signing experience.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1261-1295 |
| Number of pages | 35 |
| Journal | Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting |
| Volume | 65 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2024.
Funding
This research was funded by National Science and Technology Council, MOST 108-2410-H-005-002, Chun-Chan Yu, MOST 111-2410-H-032-005, Anxuan Xie.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| National Science and Technology Council | |
| Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan | 111-2410-H-032-005, 108-2410-H-005-002 |
| Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan |
Keywords
- Audit quality
- Co-signing experience
- Partner-level research
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Accounting
- General Business, Management and Accounting
- Finance