We study whether audit partner quality in the preceding year plays a role in restatements and audit opinions in the current year. Audit failure rate is used as a measure of audit partner quality. A dataset of Iranian listed firms consisting of 1188 observations for the years 2012–2017 is used as the sample. Multivariate analysis reveals that audit partner quality is negatively associated with restatements and issuance of a clean opinion. In addition, this negative association is stronger for the engagement partner (i.e., the partner who actually carries out the audits) than for the review partner (i.e., the partner who reviews the audits). Several sensitivity tests are employed, and the results do not change significantly. Such findings go against the “isolated-incident” argument but support the “causal” argument and suggest that governing bodies play a key role in auditor selection, changes and fees should pay more attention to audit quality at the partner level in their decisions.

我们研究了前一年的审计合作伙伴质量是否在本年的重述和审计意见中发挥作用。审核失败率用作审核合作伙伴质量的度量。以伊朗上市公司的数据集为样本，该数据集由2012-2017年的1188个观察值组成。多变量分析表明，审计伙伴的质量与重述和发表明确意见负相关。此外，与参与合作伙伴（即实际执行审核的合作伙伴）相比，与审核合作伙伴（即审核审核的合作伙伴）之间的这种消极关联性更强。使用了几项敏感性测试，结果没有明显变化。