Contabilidade e Marketing

The Impact of the Audit Quality on that of the Earnings Management: Case Study in Tunisia

Abstract

Affes H and Smii T

The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of the audit quality on that of the accounting earnings. We chose the accrual quality, the accounting conservatism and the profit relevance as a measure of the quality of the accounting earnings. The empirical study, which was carried out in this article on a sample of 20 Tunisian firms listed on the TSE (Tunisian Stock Exchange) for the period (2005-2009), confirms the significant impact of the audit quality on that of the accounting earnings. The study results also show that the variables: size of the audit firm, sectorbased specialization of the audit firm, the co-auditing and the size of the audit committee, improve the quality of the accounting earnings.