IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/euract/v34y2025i4p1365-1390.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Auditors’ Migration Status Associated with their Performance?

Author

Listed:
  • Wen He
  • Chao Kevin Li
  • Yi Si

Abstract

We investigate whether audit quality is associated with auditors’ migration status at the time of their entry to the job market after obtaining their academic degrees. Moving from less (more) to more (less) economically developed regions is termed as upward (downward) migration. Using a large sample of auditors in China, we find that upwards (downwards) migrating auditors tend to deliver higher quality (lower quality) audits than nonmigrating auditors. The association between migration status and audit quality varies predictably with auditor and client characteristics. Upwards migrating auditors are more successful in their career development than local auditors, and investors and clients appear to understand the varying audit quality provided by migrating auditors. Overall, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that employers underestimate (overestimate) the ability of upwards (downwards) migrating graduates in the recruitment process.

Suggested Citation

  • Wen He & Chao Kevin Li & Yi Si, 2025. "Is Auditors’ Migration Status Associated with their Performance?," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(4), pages 1365-1390, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:euract:v:34:y:2025:i:4:p:1365-1390
    DOI: 10.1080/09638180.2024.2384379
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09638180.2024.2384379
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09638180.2024.2384379?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:euract:v:34:y:2025:i:4:p:1365-1390. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/REAR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.