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The purpose of this paper is to accentuate whether audit quality or other variables matter for the performance of companies in Greece.

This study examines the effect of audit quality on firm performance using data of 75 companies listed in the Athens Exchange in Greece and covering the period 2018–2021. Panel data analysis is applied. The independent variables are audit quality, the size of firms, their age, leverage, liquidity and efficiency ratios. Seven alternative measures of performance are used, including, among others, return on assets and return on equity. Stock returns and risks are used too.

The results provide evidence of a positive relationship between financial performance and audit quality. The opposite is the case for stock returns and risk. On the other explanatory variables, age has a clearly negative relationship with financial performance. The opposite is the case for liquidity and efficiency. The size factor also has some sort of a positive correlation with financial performance, whereas the opposite correlation concerns the leverage ratio.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the relationship between audit quality and firm performance with data from Greece.

This research aims to revisit Gul and Goodwin (2010), which focuses on exploring the relationship between debt maturity structure, credit ratings and audit fees. Furthermore, the authors investigate whether this association varies based on firm size, firm life cycle and financial reporting quality.

To investigate the research question, the authors use an extended sample period, 2004–2017, in comparison to the sample period, 2003–2006, used in Gul and Goodwin (2010). The authors use ordinary least squares regression as a baseline methodology along with two-stage least-squares regression and change analysis to control for endogeneity concerns.

According to Gul and Goodwin (2010), auditors charge lower audit fees for firms with higher short-maturity debt and better credit ratings, indicating a lower likelihood of financial misreporting. Further, Gul and Goodwin (2010) find that lower credit rated firms benefit more from short-term debt. Primarily, the findings are consistent with Gul and Goodwin (2010) and provide further evidence that the beneficial effects of short-maturity debt for firms with poor ratings are evident for small firms, firms in the growth stage of their life cycle and firms with poor earnings quality.

The findings imply that practitioners in the audit profession and investors should take a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to varied firm and financial factors, taking into consideration the intricate relationships between many elements impacting a firm’s financial health. As a result, audit professionals may give more accurate appraisals of a firm’s financial condition, and investors can make better investment decisions.

The authors reconfirm the findings of Gul and Goodwin (2010) using an extended sample. The findings are novel, which evidence that the lower audit fees for rated firms with short-maturity debt are moderated by firm size, life cycle and financial reporting quality.

The purpose of this study is to examine the cost of the introduction of independent audit inspections in New Zealand.

The research is conducted using audit fee data from New Zealand and examines the overall impact of the reforms on the cost imposed on auditees.

The findings show that there was no general increase in audit fees but a significant increase in audit fees for small listed companies compared to audit fees for unlisted companies and large listed companies.

The practical implications of this study suggest that the introduction of independent inspections led to increased costs for some clients, particularly smaller listed companies, and that audit firms were able to pass on these costs to their clients. These results have important implications for policymakers and auditors alike.

This study provides new insights into the cost of the introduction of independent audit inspections, which have been the subject of ongoing criticisms and recommendations for improvement.

This paper investigates whether the audit fees of Chinese listed firms are associated with the share pledging practice of the firm’s controlling shareholders.

This study uses the audit pricing model to estimate the association between the share pledging of listed firms and audit fees. Cross-sectional analysis is conducted on a large sample of Chinese listed firms during the period 2004 to 2019. The authors further test the moderating effects of listing on the Main Board, state ownership and abnormal audit report lag on the association between share pledging and audit fees. The results remain robust to various endogeneity tests including two-stage least squares instrumental variable analysis, entropy balancing analysis and difference-in-difference analysis.

The study finds that audit fees are positively associated with the proportion of shares pledged by the listed firm’s controlling shareholder in China. The results also provide new evidence that the positive association between audit fees and the share pledging of controlling shareholders could be mitigated if the firm is listed on the Main Board and/or it is a state-owned enterprise. In contrast, pledged firms with abnormal audit report lag are found to have higher audit fees than their pledged counterparts without the excessively long audit delay.

Findings of this study have important practical implications to those charged with governance, as boards need to comprehensively understand the adverse consequences of share pledging when pursuing it as the firm’s major source of financing. The study also has policy implications for stock market regulators such as the China Securities Regulatory Commission in China. Regulators could consider developing a threshold-based share pledging disclosure and pledge ratio requirements based on factors such as a firm’s listing status and ownership structure.

This study provides new evidence on the audit-related consequences of share pledging in a significant capital market. Findings of this study also enrich the existing audit literature by introducing the share pledging activities of controlling shareholders into the audit pricing decision-making model.

This study investigates the consequences of the key audit matter (KAM) disclosure requirement by considering two salient audit proxies: audit fees and audit report lag. This investigation is relevant because most auditors worldwide are required to expand their audit report including discussion on key matters faced in the audit engagement. However, the emerging literature on the implications of KAM is inconclusive.

Using a distinctive dataset of 601 year-observations for firms listed on the Omani capital market over 2012–2019, this study employs pooled panel data regression with robust standard error.

Results indicate that auditors increased their fees considerably during the period of KAM but substantially shortened audit report lag. Conversely, using the KAM period as a sample, the authors find marginal or insignificant evidence for the effect of the number of KAM on both proxies. In additional analyses, this study shows that entity-level risk KAM is associated with higher fees and shorter audit report lag, while KAM related to account-level risk does not have the same effect. Interestingly, it is observed that KAM disclosure is strongly associated with higher fees and high-quality audit even when the auditors issue their report in a shorter time.

This study contributes to the limited research examining the consequences of KAM in emerging markets. It is also the first to show that KAM is associated with shorter audit report lag.

With the increasing demand for sustainable developments, higher education should focus on teaching both sustainable buildings and infrastructure systems. This study aims to investigate the existing sustainable infrastructure (SI) teaching efforts in sustainability courses; identify best practices to integrate SI throughout bachelor’s and master’s programs under the construction management (CM) curricula; and propose guidelines for students to obtain Envision sustainability professional (ENV SP) credential during sustainability education.

This study conducted keywords search within the sustainability course descriptions under the American Council for Construction Education accredited CM curricula to locate SI topics. Additionally, this research collected inputs from the Envision Academic Committee members to develop a matrix representing the best practices for integrating SI in higher education and provided a guide with a step-by-step procedure to obtain ENV SP credentials.

This study identified a gap regarding the availability of SI education and offered best practices on how CM curricula might nurture such knowledge. Phase I highlighted that only two CM programs taught infrastructure sustainability, and three programs offered sustainability credentialing processes under a bachelor’s degree. Phase II developed a framework that offered a variety of pedagogical approaches and outlined the process for obtaining the ENV SP certificate for CM students in the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior years.

The findings of this study can facilitate CM education to create awareness among the future workforce and encourage them to establish skills pertaining to the economic, social and environmental implications while designing SI.

This study aims to explore the use, effectiveness, motives and obstacles of analytical procedures (APs) used by auditors in Palestine, a context characterised by a pool of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), a limited skill set, poor quality of data, political uncertainty and a community-based business culture.

The study considers the audit market in Palestine using a sequential mixed-methods approach combining a questionnaire survey and a series of in-depth interviews. A total of 129 Big-4 and non-Big-4 auditors were surveyed.

The use of APs is driven by the auditor size (Big-4 vs non-Big-4) and the client size (large vs SMEs). Even though the use of APs has increased over the past decade, audit objectives, know-how, and personal, family and social connections among auditors and clients influence the quality of the audit process.

Small firms take advantage of the lack of audit governance in Palestine. Our findings suggest that the regulators should help bridge the knowledge-sharing programmes between the small and large audit firms to help improve audit quality.

Studies on audit quality, particularly using APs, in the context of politically unstable cases such as Palestine are limited. The study has implications for the use of APs in the case of SMEs to prepare for the technological revolution that will modernise audit procedures and quality soon.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact hosting the Super Bowl has on audit completion and financial reporting timeliness for companies headquartered in Super Bowl hosting cities.

Using 16 years of financial reporting data, this study uses the Super Bowl and related activities, combined with required filings during “busy season,” as a natural experiment to examine how audit firms navigate short-term, exogenously imposed but anticipated, audit team capacity constraints.

Companies headquartered in a city hosting the Super Bowl, during busy season, have longer audit report lags (by approximately three days, in comparison to non-hosting busy season audits) and less timely securities and exchange commission (SEC) (10-K) filings. The authors find no evidence that Super Bowl hosting affects audit fees or earnings announcement timeliness.

When confronted with anticipated capacity shocks, audit firms take longer to complete the audit, absorbing the financial costs of the delay and maintaining audit quality, resulting in less timely financial reporting.

This study demonstrates the costs of Super Bowl-related inefficiencies and contributes to our understanding of how auditors navigate capacity shocks. This study provides evidence that auditors can effectively manage business risk and continue to facilitate providing timely and accurate information to financial statement users in the face of a capacity shock.

Food delivery applications (FDAs) are becoming more and more well-liked across Generations X, Y and Z, with Asia experiencing the biggest growth. These three generations of consumers have distinct views toward using FDAs because they were influenced by various social environments, cultures and experiences. Therefore, marketers ought to present customers with various values. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the theory of consumption values (TCV) affects the intention of various generational cohorts to continued usage intentions.

Online surveys were distributed to 745 Thai customers who had previously ordered meals from FDAs to collect information. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis.

Results reveal that there are significant differences among Generations X, Y and Z, while emotional value is insignificant. Generation X is concerned about functional and conditional value, whereas Generation Y expresses the highest concern on epistemic and social value. Meanwhile, Generation Z pays attention to epistemic, functional and social value.

The novelty of this study contributes to TCV affecting the different FDAs consumption value among Generations X, Y and Z, while the previous research only focused on gender and age difference, and this study firstly combines FDAs with TCV to predict the consumers’ intention to continuously use FDAs in the post-COVID-19 outbreak.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the voluntary implementation of an internal audit department (IAD) by municipalities has any influence on external auditors' opinions.

This study population comprises the 308 Portuguese municipalities, from which the authors extracted a sample of 179. Financial and audit reports were collected from the period under analysis (2014–2017). The sample was then divided into two groups: municipalities that had voluntarily implemented an IAD and those that had not. Internal audit departments were characterized according to their robustness – whether they were more or less robust. First, a descriptive statistical analysis of the dataset was performed to analyze the representativeness of the sample and to extract insights. To address the research questions, ordinal random effect regression models were considered.

Contrary to the authors' expectations, the voluntary implementation of an IAD had no influence on the audit report type. However, when the authors refined the approach to include the robustness of the IAD, it became clear that this variable does influence the report issued by the external auditor.

This paper contributes to the current literature by determining the effects of the robustness of IADs on municipality audit reports. As far as the authors know, this paper is novel. Since auditing plays an important role in the transparency of public financial statements and in promoting equity, this study shows that a robust IAD is an advantage in the pursuit of these goals.