Impacto da dimensão do auditor na qualidade da auditoria em Portugal

Abstract

A low audit quality associated with misleading financial statements can have severe consequences in the financial markets, leading to increasing concerns among stakeholders who seek reliable financial statements from companies. Consequently, understanding the determinants that affect the quality of an audit has become an extremely important issue for the financial information users (Salehi et al., 2019). It is worth noting that there has always been a debate between larger and smaller auditing firms (Big 4 or Non-Big 4) regarding which presents better audit quality. In this sense, this dissertation aims to analyze whether there is a relationship between the size of the auditor and the quality of the audit in Portugal. In order to quantify earnings manipulation (EM), the Modified Jones Model was used, estimating the discretionary accruals, and a linear regression based on the Lawrence, et al. (2011) equation. The sample consists of 16,540 companies for the period from 2020 to 2022, inclusive. The results obtained show evidence that Portuguese companies audit by Big 4 exhibit more earnings manipulations than Portuguese companies audit by Non-Big 4.

Date of Award	18 Dec 2024
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Maria José Martins Lourenço da Fonseca (Supervisor) & Ricardo Ribeiro (Co-Supervisor)