Impact of the Disclosure of Audit Engagement Partners on Audit Quality: Evidence from the United States

Abstract

The debate concerning the recent regulation in the United States mandating accounting firms to disclose engagement partners’ identity is ongoing. We examine the impact of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s (PCAOB) requirement of disclosing engagement partners’ names on Form AP on the quality of audit engagements. Using two measures of audit quality (abnormal accruals and the probability of detecting material weaknesses in internal control), we find that disclosing engagement partners’ names is associated with a lower level of abnormal accruals and a higher probability of accounting firms detecting material weaknesses in internal control. Our study extends the contemporary research on the disclosure of engagement partners’ identification by providing additional evidence to the literature on this issue in the U.S. setting. Our study also provides evidence supporting the PCAOB’s perception that this disclosure leads to higher audit quality.

Keywords: engagement partners; audit quality; partner identification