Is Corporate Governance A Determinant of Auditor Choice -Evidence From Turkey

Abstract

External independent audit is an important component of strong corporate governance. The choice of independent external auditor is determined by several different factors. Besides all firmspecific factors, corporate governance might be a determinant of external auditor choice. The relation between auditor choice and corporate governance varies in accordance with the “substitution or complementary effect”. Firms may prefer to demand less effective and low quality audit and substitute the quality of audit services by a strong corporate governance structure. Alternatively, firms may demand a high quality audit in order to complement and support firms’ corporate governance structure. Therefore it is important to understand how a strong corporate governance structure is associated with auditor choice to reveal the effect of each corporate governance mechanisms on Big-4 and industry-specialist auditor choice. The main aim of this study is to investigate the association between corporate governance and auditor choice by using a sample of 805 firm-year observations from Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) between the years 2005-2009. Overall findings show that, firms’ auditor choice in terms of Big-4 and audit firm industry specialization is affected by the firm-level corporate governance mechanisms of firms, particularly, board of directors’ composition and ownership structure