This study aims to test the impact of audit partner identification in audit reports on audit efforts. Our study is motivated by the enactment of International Standard on Auditing (ISA) 700: Forming an Opinion and Reporting on Financial Statements, which requires audit firms to disclose the engagement partner’s identity in audit reports. We posit that such an extended disclosure will increase auditors’ efforts, which will be reflected in audit fees and audit report lag (ARL). To test our conjectures, we employ ordinary least square regression (OLS) and Heckman’s two-stage endogeneity test. We find that ARL increases significantly in post-regulation periods compared to pre-regulation periods. Interestingly, we do not find any impact of audit partner identity disclosure on audit fees. In our additional analysis, we document that the positive relation between ARL and regulation is highly pronounced only in conventional banks. Our results suggest that new regulations increase audit efforts, and auditors spend a longer time issuing audit opinions; however, audit firms do not charge higher fees to compensate for their additional efforts. This study contributes to the audit fee and ARL literature by providing empirical evidence on the impact of audit regulation from an emerging country perspective.
Miah et al. (Sun,) studied this question.