Auditor human capital and audit firm survival [An article from: Accounting, Organizations and Society]

This digital document is a journal article from Accounting, Organizations and Society, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
This paper studies the relationship between auditor human capital and audit firm survival. Specifically, the effects are investigated of the human capital of auditors on the survival chances of newly established audit firms. Human capital is analyzed both at the time of entry of a new audit firm and during the lifetime of an audit firm. The data set contains 1693 firms that entered into the Dutch audit market in the period 1930-1992. To analyze the data, the technique of event history analysis is applied. There are two key results of the study. First, a higher level of education of the firm's auditors, both at founding and during the lifetime of an audit firm, generally increases audit firm performance. Second, the effects of experience at founding and experience during the lifetime of an audit firm vary considerably. Higher levels of experience at founding have a positive influence on audit firm performance. However, higher levels of experience during the lifetime of an audit firm, i.e., the aging of the firm's auditors, have a negative effect on firm performance.