Audit opinion and earnings management: Empirical evidence from Vietnam

This paper aims to explore the interaction between earnings management and audit opinions in the context of Vietnam – an emerging country. For this purpose, two regressions were developed with sample consists of 1,294 firm-years in the period from 2018 to 2020. The first regression model uses Audit Opinion as dependent variable, Discretionary Accruals (DA) as independent variable, and other 8 controlling variables. The results demonstrate that the Discretionary Accruals influence audit opinion, significantly at 0.1 level in the study year. This means the auditor’s probability of issuing modified opinion is positively associated with earnings management and with the attendance of a Big 4 audit companies. Another regression model tests influence of auditor size (measured by Opinion of Auditor) on the interaction between management of earnings and audit opinion (measured by Discretionary Accruals) as independent variable, and other 10 controlling variables. Surprisingly, this model is not statistically significant and this confirms that the appearance of a Big 4 audit companies does not significantly affect the nexus between profit management and audit opinion in the case of Vietnamese listed companies. The results suggest that Big 4 audit firms tend to have higher requirements for the true-and-fair information on the client’s financial statements and often have a tendency to issue modified opinions when the financial statements have material errors, or it is impossible to collect sufficient audit evidence. This finding may enhance the decision-making process of users in various circumstances. AcknowledgmentsThis paper is funded by the National Economics University (NEU), Vietnam. The authors thank anonymous reviewers for their contributions and the NEU for supporting this study.