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The Impact of Auditor Industry Specialization, Type of Auditor and Audit Opinion on ARL: The Case of Egypt

Hebatallah Badawy and El Wahab AA

This paper aims to analyze the impact of auditor industry specialization, type of audit opinion, type of auditor (private versus state auditor), and number of remarks from one side and Audit report lag (hereafter ARL) on the other side using a sample of non-financial companies listed in the Egyptian Stock Exchange (hereafter EGX) in 2015 and 2016. The sample consists of 296 firm-year observations of non-financial companies listed in the EGX. The authors developed a multivariate regression model to examine the relationship between audit report lag and auditor specialization, type of audit opinion, type of auditor (private versus state auditor), and the number of remarks associated with the qualified audit opinion. We find a negative association between ARL and auditor industry specialization. Also, ARL is positively and significantly associated with non-state auditor. In addition, ARL shows to be longer when the number of remarks associated with the qualified audit opinion increases. This paper extends the audit report lag literature and adds an important party; the state auditor, which is the Accountability State Authority (ASA). The state auditor in Egypt (ASA) is being ignored in prior literature, although it plays an important role in auditing companies that are owned totally or partially (more than 25%) by the government or public figures.