Auditor Tenure, Auditor Specialization, and Information Asymmetry

This paper examines the association between bid-ask spread, a market based measure of information asymmetry, and auditor industry specialization and auditor tenure. Our results show that information asymmetry is negatively related to the employment of an industry specialist auditor and positively related to audit firm tenure. These results are consistent across measures of specialization based on market share, portfolio share, and a composite measure of specialization introduced by Neal and Riley (2004). However, further tests refine those conclusions, in that the positive association between tenure and information asymmetry differs between specialist and non-specialist auditors. Specifically, we find that bid-ask spread is increasing in tenure for clients of non-specialist regardless of which measure of specialization is used, while the relation between bid-ask spread and tenure is statistically significant for clients of specialists for only one of the three specialization measures. These findings are consistent with a market that perceives audit quality diminishing with tenure for non-specialist auditors; and a market that finds audit quality increasing with industry specialization