[雙語(yǔ)翻譯]審計(jì)專業(yè)外文翻譯—審計(jì)師專業(yè)化、會(huì)計(jì)信息質(zhì)量和投資效率（原文）

1、Contents lists available at ScienceDirectResearch in International Business and Financejournal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ribafReviewAuditor specialization, accounting information quality and investment efficiency

2、Assawer Elaouda,?, Anis Jarbouiba Department of Accounting, Faculty of Economics and Management of Sfax, Road of Aerodrom km 4 – B.P. no. 3018, Sfax, Tunisia b Department of Financial and Accounting, Universities Higher

3、Institute of Business Administration (ISAAS), Road of Aerodrom km 4 – B.P. no. 1013-3018, Sfax, TunisiaA R T I C L E I N F OKeywords:Investment efficiencyUnderinvestmentOverinvestmentAuditor specializationAccounting info

4、rmation quality (AIQ)A B S T R A C TThis study is examined how the auditor specialization moderates the effect of accounting in-formation quality on investment efficiency, i.e., whether the effect of accounting informati

5、onquality on investment efficiency is increasing or decreasing with the presence of the specialistauditor.The reached result reveals that the accounting information quality appears to help decreasethe overinvestment prob

6、lem. Similarly, the auditor specialization has been discovered to helpgreatly in improving investment efficiency, while reducing the underinvestment problem. Wefurther find that the accounting information quality and the

7、 auditor specialization are two me-chanisms with some degree of substitution in enhancing investment efficiency. The accountinginformation quality is positively associated with investment efficiency for firms whose audit

8、or isan industry specialist.In addition, to check the robustness of the main results, this paper investigates the causalrelationships between investment efficiency, auditor specialization and accounting informationqualit

9、y from the dynamic simultaneous-equation models.1. IntroductionA large theoretical and empirical literature examines the role of the accounting information quality (Bushman et al., 2001;Bushman and Smith, 2001; Bagaeva,

10、2008; Chan et al., 2009; Chan and Lee, 2009; Zhiying et al., 2012; Ran et al., 2015). One line ofresearch (Biddle and Hilary, 2006; McNichols and Stubben, 2008; Biddle et al., 2009; Chen et al., 2011) suggests that highe

11、r qualityinformation enables managers to identify better investment opportunities. Several studies also propose that auditor specialization canbe used to reduce the information asymmetry problems (Almutairi et al., 2009;

12、 DeBoskey et al., 2012; DeBoskey and Jiang, 2012;Yaghoobnezhada et al., 2014): A specialist’s knowledge of the industry can be developed through vast auditing experience, spe-cialized staff training, and large investment

13、s in information technology. This industry-specific knowledge allows specialist auditors toprovide higher quality audit service by reducing the information asymmetry through their greater ability to detect significantano

14、malies.Theoretical models (Balsam et al., 2003; Lai, 2011) predict that, despite the limited evidence, a highly acquired audit quality isextremely useful for improving investment efficiencies, especially with respect to

15、overinvestment. Based on these premises, the mainpurpose of this paper is to combine these two mechanisms and analyze the effect of the accounting information quality (AIQ) and thehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ribaf.2017.0

16、7.006Received 19 August 2016; Received in revised form 27 June 2017; Accepted 3 July 2017? Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: elaoudassawer@outlook.fr (A. Elaoud), anisjarboui@yahoo.fr (A. Jarboui).Research in Intern

17、ational Business and Finance 42 (2017) 616–629Available online 15 July 20170275-5319/ © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.MARKHirshleifer et al. (2004), Biddle et al. (2009) and Chen et al. (2011) examine the e

18、ffect of information quality on two inefficientscenarios, overinvestment and underinvestment, and reported that higher information quality helps greatly in encouraging under-investment companies to make investments, and

19、overinvestment companies to decrease their investment level. Consistent with thisview, Gomariz and Bellesta (2014) find that conservatism leads to reducing both overinvestment and underinvestment, because itreduces inves

20、tment-cash flow sensitivity with regard to overinvestment firms and facilitates access to external financing regardingunderinvestment firms.In this respect, we undertake to analyze the AIQ impact on investment efficiency

21、, and our first hypothesis set up as follows:H1. Firms with higher AIQ will show higher investment efficiency.Since we examine whether the AIQ reduces the underinvestment and the overinvestment, we should also test the f

22、ollowing twosub-hypotheses:H1a. Firms with higher AIQ will mitigate the overinvestment problem.H1b. Firms with higher AIQ will mitigate the underinvestment problem.2.2. Investment efficiency and auditor specializationIn

23、Some previously conducted studies, it has been shown that the auditor’s ability and competence highlighting rigor and in-dependence, can be assessed by its industry specialization (Craswell et al., 1995; Gramling et al.,

24、 2001; Gramling and Stone, 2001;Velury, 2003; Hammersley, 2006; Moroney, 2007; Autore et al., 2009; Hakim et al., 2010; Hakim and Omri, 2010; DeBoskey et al.,2012; DeBoskey and Jiang, 2012). Knowledge of the activity sec

25、tor of the audited firms should be useful in the investment evaluation.By learning about the business of the client company, its strategies, motivation and accounting information system and accessingknowledge of the type

26、 of the frequency of potential errors and so on, auditors evaluate the accounting results (Hakim et al., 2010;Hakim and Omri, 2010; Sun et al., 2011; Sun and Liu, 2011). In turn, Hammersley (2006) and Stanley and DeZoort

27、 (2007) predictthat the auditor specialization in a particular industry has considerable experience and significant investments in technology adaptedto this particular sector. The specialist auditors are particularly rel

28、evant in this area and are likely to provide a relatively high auditquality.In fact, appealing to a specialized auditor service can provide guaranteed assurance as to the information quality. The authorsfound that firms

29、audited by a qualified auditor communicate forecast information on future cash flows more credibly than thoseaudited by a non-specialist auditor.The role of the auditor specialization in reducing managers’ discretion and

30、 disciplining their investment decisions has beendiscussed in the related literature mainly by Gul et al. (2009) and DeBoskey and Jiang (2012). However, this literature has alsoemphasized the role played by auditors unde

31、r information asymmetry, highlighting that the use of the auditor specialization is amechanism whereby we can attenuate informational asymmetries and agency costs between shareholders, creditors and managers.Auditors see

32、m to have difficulty measuring amounts of discretionary part and have been forced to reissue their reports because ofregulators findings (Balsam et al., 2003; DeBoskey et al., 2012; DeBoskey and Jiang, 2012). Hence, an e

33、mpirical question may beposed as to whether the auditor industry specialization is similarly associated with investment efficiency.An examination of the literature suggests that firms with high investment opportunities m

34、ay need high quality audits because theyhave a weak internal control system which may not keep up with the growth pace, resulting in higher control and audit risk (Tsuiet al., 2001; Cahan et al., 2006; Lai, 2009).Gul et

35、al. (2003) suggest that discretionary accruals help to increase audit risk because they are inherently more difficult to audit.In addition, it is also suggested that the employment of the Big 5 auditors is likely to be u

36、seful to firms with high investment rates, asfirms with high investment opportunities tend to often have more discretionary accruals, which makes the Big5 auditors’ ability tocurb discretionary accruals fit suitably for

37、such firms.Thus, we expect an increased level of monitoring by the use of specialist auditor to be a key mechanism in this context, to reducemoral hazard problems and empire-building activities. Consequently, we expect t

38、hat the specialist auditors will also help the in-vestment efficiency.Based on this, our second hypothesis and its sub-hypotheses are as follows:H2. The firms that undertake a specialist auditor show greater investment e

39、fficiency.H2a. The firms that undertake a specialist auditor can mitigate overinvestment problems.H2b. The firms that undertake a specialist auditor can mitigate underinvestment problems.2.3. The AIQ effect on investment

40、 efficiency conditioned to the auditor specializationAside from checking the isolated effect of the accounting information quality and the auditor specialization on investment ef-ficiency (Biddle and Hilary, 2006; Cahan

41、et al., 2006; DeBoskey et al., 2012; DeBoskey and Jiang, 2012; Gomariz and Bellesta, 2014;Lu et al., 2016), we examine their interaction effect, i.e., we investigate whether the effect of the AIQ on investment efficiency