The purpose of this paper is to examine the value relevance of the perceived audit quality in terms of who audits, as well as the audit outcomes in terms of the auditor's opinion and accruals quality, in the pricing of debt capital for privately-held firms by examining a large sample of...

We argue that audit quality has direct and indirect effects on the cost of equity capital. Direct effects are consistent with auditor reputation effects reflecting insurance and/or assurance roles. However, if audit quality is at least in part a reflection of expected assurance levels, then we...