TITLE:
BIG4 or Non-BIG4 Auditors: Their Impact on Audit Quality during the Global Financial Crisis
AUTHORS:
Maria I. Kyriakou, Augustinos I. Dimitras
KEYWORDS:
BIG4, Non-BIG4, Auditor Tenure, Audit Quality, Financial Crisis, GDP
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.8 No.5,
April
9,
2018
ABSTRACT: The objective of this paper
is to examine the relationship between auditor tenure and discretionary
accruals as a proxy of audit quality. The main finding is that this
relationship was found to be negative for BIG4 and non-BIG4 auditors in crisis and non-crisis periods,
for both German and French companies. In addition, Italian and Spanish
companies seem to interplay in crisis and non-crisis periods being either
negative or not for BIG4 and non-BIG4 auditors. The findings imply that the
larger the country, the better the audit quality and this seems to be
confirmed by graphs and statistically by the one-sample T-test.