Are Going Concern Opinions Associated with Lower Audit Impact?

Abstract

The issuance of going concern (GC) opinions by auditors has been accepted, a priori, as a measure of auditor independence and quality throughout the literature (DeFond Zhang 2014). Recent findings suggest researchers should reconsider the validity of this measure. The issuance of GC opinions has been shown to reduce expected litigation costs to auditors (Kaplan and Williams 2012) and GC opinions have been shown to be associated with deficient audits (Aobdia 2015). These studies, however, are unable to explain changes in audit behavior surrounding the issuance of GC opinions. I develop a measure of audit impact using Benford’s law. Emerging research supports the application of Benford’s law in assessing quality of financial statements (Amiram et al. 2015). I exploit the fact that this measure is not contaminated by business and economic risks, which are of particular concern when GC opinions are being considered. My findings suggest that more impactful auditors are less likely to issue GC opinions and the GC opinions they do issue are more predictive of bankruptcies; in addition, I find the quality of financial statements to be lower when GC opinions are issued. This decline is resulting from a reduction in the auditor’s impact. Consistent with external factors motivating less impactful auditors to overissue GC opinions, I find their GC opinions are less predictive of bankruptcy.