Do Banks Value Audit Reports or Auditor Reputation? Evidence from Private Spanish Firms

Abstract

This paper studies the relevance of audit qualifications and auditor selection for the external stakeholders of private companies in code-law countries. Employing a sample of private Spanish firms, we find that the cost of debt is not influenced by auditor opinion, but it is strongly influenced by the selection of a high-quality auditor. These findings suggest that Spanish banks' and lenders' decisions are more influenced by the reputation of the auditor than by the content of the audit report. These results are robust to both the unobserved heterogeneity problem and the potential endogenous nature of the explanatory variables.