Busy Auditors, Partner-Client Tenure, and Audit Quality: Evidence from an Emerging Market

ABSTRACT

Using a sample of public firms listed in the Chinese market for the years 2000–2009, we find that audit partners with more public clients are associated with lower audit quality, consistent with the “busyness” effect that auditing multiple clients dissipates audit partner effort and, thus, reduces audit quality. However, the negative association is more pronounced ...more