Study On The Relevance Between Auditor Individual Characteristics And Audit Quality

As we all know, Audit report with high quality has an important impact on investors’ decisions, maintain the confidence of investors and the stability of the securities market. There are a large number of scholars into the research on audit quality, the already research results are mainly influencing factors on the quality of audits, research perspective mainly from two types:the firm level and audit clients. However, the fundamental body to perform the audit work is auditor individual. And this theory perspective make the research of individual auditors on audit quality have concerned by policy makers and academia.This article chooses the key perspective by focusing on auditors’ partner characteristics, and researches its influence on audit quality by multiple levels. Then collected financial data and audit information from screened companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2010--2012, and with manually search on the website of China Securities Regulatory Commission, China Association of Certified Accountants, Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchange, obtained the data of auditors’ individual characteristics. On the basis of previous studies, this paper choose gender, level of education, practice time, political affiliation, level, five types of audit personal characteristics to expand. Consider gender, level of education, practice time, political affiliation as control variables while focusing on auditors’ level characteristic, to study on the relevance. The empirical results show that:(1) Being signed by the auditor as partners with the accounting firm would be a positive effect on audit quality; and reducing the number of partners will weaken the positive effect on audit quality. (2) Being signed by the auditor at the same time as partners with the accounting firm and the Chinese Communist Party membership will have positive impact on audit quality. (3) Being signed by the auditor at the same time as partners with the accounting firm and with Audit organizational form from limited company to special partnership will have positive impact on audit quality. In addition, auditors’ Individual Characteristics of gender, level of education, practice time, political affiliation did not have a significant effect on audit quality.Moreover, on the basis of audit case analysis which study on Crowe Horwath Certified Public Accountants and Da Hua Certified Public Accountants support research results that partner characteristic and the Chinese Communist Party membership have insurance on audit quality.This paper start from the perspective of auditors’ individual characteristics to study the issue of audit quality, proposes a new thinking to influence factor of audit quality. And bring positive evidence by creatively consider the impact of accounting firm restructuring to the special general partnership. The research and conclusion enrich the already research, and have certain implications on the improvement of audit quality and perfect the policy supervision.