The Relationships between Auditor Industry Specialization and Earnings Quality in Listed Companies on Tehran Stock Exchange

Former studies have hypothesized that auditor industry specialization contributes to audit quality. Thus, 117 listed firms on TSE for time period 1381-1386 were selected. This study examines the association between measures of earnings quality and auditor industry specialization.Extending this literature, we compare the absolute level of discretionary accruals (DAC) and earnings response coefficients (ERC) of firms audited by industry specialists with those which are not audited by industry specialists. We restrict our study to clients of auditors who are accepted for Stock and Exchange Organization (SEO) to control the brand name. Because industry specialization is unobservable, we use market share approach for it. After controlling for variables established in previous works to be related to DAC and the ERC, we find clients of industry specialist auditors have lower DAC and higher ERC than clients of non-specialist auditors. This finding is consistent with clients of industry specialists having higher earnings quality than clients of non-specialists.