The Impact of Political Relations on Auditor's Opinion with Emphasis on Market Characteristics of Companies Listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange

Abstract

The most important and valuable service of the auditing profession is independent and expert comment on the desirability of financial statements. Financial statements are claims made by management. The opinion is made in the form of an audit report. Various factors affect the auditor's opinion. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of political relations on the auditor's comments by emphasizing the market characteristics of companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. In order to achieve the research goal, 174 companies were selected from the companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during the years 2011 to 2017 by systematic removal sampling method and a total of 1218 companies were selected (year - company) for analysis. Logistic regression model was used to investigate the relationships between the variables and the combined data method was used to test the hypotheses. Four criteria of non-governmental ownership, institutional investors, managerial ownership and severe penalties were used to calculate market characteristics. The findings demonstrated that political relations have a negative impact on the auditor's comments. It is more likely that auditors of non-state companies issue desirable reports than the auditors of state companies. The presence of institutional shareholders undermines the impact of political relations on the auditor's comments. In addition, managerial ownership undermines the impact of political relations on the auditor's comments. However, in the presence of severe penalties, political relations have no significant effect on the auditor's opinion.