Auditor Characteristics and Audit Report Lag: A Meta-Analysis

The purpose of this study is to use a meta-analysis approach to analyze and combine inconsistent results of past researches on the impact of the auditor and audit-related features on the audit report lag. These variables include the auditing firm size, auditor industry specialization, auditor change, the audit tenure, type of auditor report and auditor busy season

in order to achieve the purpose of the research using Lipsey & Wilson (2000) method  and also Cochran’s Q test and Egger test, a total of 75 studies including 20 internal studies during 2010 Up to 2019 and 55 foreign studies during the years 1989 to 2019 were reviewed. In these researches audit report lag was considered as a dependent variable and the characteristics of the audit firm as an independent variable.

The results show that there is no significant relation between audit firm size and the auditor tenure with audit report lag. While auditor change, type of auditor report, and auditor busy season have a positive relation with audit report lag. Finally, there is a negative relation between auditor industry specialization and audit report lag.

The specialized auditors in companies can speed up the audit process and make financial reports available to users with less audit lag. also to reduce audit report lag, firms should reduce the auditor change and first-year audit and Provide the necessary infrastructure to reduce material misstatements in corporate financial statements and the publishing of qualified report by auditors, which leads to Timely publish of financial statements that enriches the content of information.