A Comprehensive Model of Factors Influencing Audit Failure: A Logistic Regression Approach

Abstract

The present study aims to explain the influencing factors—including auditor characteristics, client characteristics, stock market features, and macroeconomic factors—on distress in companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange. To achieve this objective, 1,848 firm-year observations (154 companies over 12 years) were collected from the annual financial reports of companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange during the period from 2011 to 2022. The study findings indicate that auditor size, auditor tenure, auditor independence, audit firm ranking, type of auditor's opinion, audit report delay, auditor specialization, audit fees, company size, company liquidity, company profitability, institutional ownership, major shareholder ownership, board independence, CEO tenure, inflation rate, exchange rate, and economic growth rate have a negative and significant impact on audit failure. Conversely, auditor change, company's debt ratio, government ownership, unsystematic risk, and interest rate have a positive and significant effect on audit failure. Finally, the results show that, statistically, company age, company growth opportunities, client industry size, client industry competition level, client ownership type (private or public), managerial ownership, audit committee size, audit committee independence, audit committee financial expertise, board size, board financial expertise, and systematic risk do not have a significant effect on audit failure.