engleski

Auditing Practices during Pandemic Times – Implications, Prospects and Leading Factors

The paper subscribes to a current concern related to audit profession and auditing practices during pandemic times and has a two- fold objective. The first one gravitates around performing a review of the recent official opinions in the field of audit and corporate governance and its contribution to the overall economic indicators. The second objective aims at identifying the institutional, regulatory, economic and financial environment indicators that may exert an impact on the strength of auditing and reporting standards, to uncover whether country-specific environments contribute to strengthening the quality of audits. The empirical analysis comprises 28 European countries, covering a timeframe from 2000 to 2019 and relies on a panel regression framework. The set of explanatory variables considered comprises: i) a financial environment proxy, represented by the Index of Financial Stress ; ii) an economic development variable, represented by GDP per capita growth rate ; iii) country governance indicators, such as the political stability, the regulatory quality, the control of corruption and the economic policy uncertainty. A dummy variable related to the status of a country’s membership to the Eurozone will be also tested, to reveal whether the strength of auditing and reporting standards is determined by the country’s membership to this group. Another dummy variable included in the analysis is related to the occurrence of the 2008 global financial crisis and is meant to serve as a proxy for another global turmoil time, similar to the one witnessed at present. The conclusions will allow us to formulate some remarks and expectations regarding the potential impact of the pandemic on the strength of audit standards and the potential challenges that may arise in the future for this profession.

audit profession ; auditing standards ; pandemic ; panel regression

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