دانلود رایگان مقاله تخصص حسابرس، کیفیت اطلاعات حسابداری و کارایی سرمایه گذاری

ABSTRACT

This study is examined how the auditor specialization moderates the effect of accounting information quality on investment efficiency, i.e., whether the effect of accounting information quality on investment efficiency is increasing or decreasing with the presence of the specialist auditor. The reached result reveals that the accounting information quality appears to help decrease the overinvestment problem. Similarly, the auditor specialization has been discovered to help greatly in improving investment efficiency, while reducing the underinvestment problem. We further find that the accounting information quality and the auditor specialization are two mechanisms with some degree of substitution in enhancing investment efficiency. The accounting information quality is positively associated with investment efficiency for firms whose auditor is an industry specialist. In addition, to check the robustness of the main results, this paper investigates the causal relationships between investment efficiency, auditor specialization and accounting information quality from the dynamic simultaneous-equation models.

6. Conclusions

Several previously elaborated studies have revealed that the accounting information quality can greatly help in improving investment efficiency by reducing information asymmetries that give rise to frictions such as moral hazard and adverse selection. This work is designed as an extension to those researches by attempting to document the panel through which accounting information quality can relate to the investment efficiency. More specifically, the special attempt has been made to test the hypothesis that a higher accounting information quality can be associated with either mitigating the overinvestment or the underinvestment problems. For a more reliably effective estimation of accounting information quality, an appeal has been made to the measure proposed by Stubben (2010), considering that discretionary revenues stand as a proxy for earnings management.

In this respect, prior conducted studies dealing with such a subject have also put a great emphasis on the role played by auditors in information asymmetry, highlighting that the use of the auditor specialization may stand as a mechanism that can attenuate informational asymmetries and agency cost. Indeed, the use of a specialized service auditor can provide assurance on the information quality. In this particular context, the authors find that firms audited by a qualified auditor turn out to be likely to communicate forecast information on future cash flows more credibly than those audited by a non-specialist auditor.

The beneficial effects of auditor industry specialization are most marked in the industrial firms. Hence, our second hypothesis focuses on the auditor industry specialization impact on the investment efficiency.

Further, an examination of whether the auditor specialization does have influences on the investment efficiency. In addition to checking the isolated effect of the accounting information quality and the auditor specialization on investment efficiency, we examine whether the AIQ effect helps either increase or decrease the investment efficiency for firms whose auditor is an industry specialist.