Do Country Differences Matter? Key Audit Matter Disclosure and the Role of Country Attributes

Key audit matters (KAM) are a primary communication channel between the auditor and financial statement users, so understanding the determinants of KAM disclosure is important. Our comprehensive cross-country study contributes to this goal by investigating the extent to which country-specific differences affect KAM reporting. We examine companies from 30 European countries, offering a well-suited research setting with uniform KAM regulation effective since 2017 and simultaneously broad institutional diversity. We find that a large set of economic, regulatory, audit market-related, and sociological country attributes significantly explains variation in KAM disclosure. We show that country-specific characteristics determine various aspects of KAM reporting – including the number, type, and writing style of KAMs – while we observe varying importance and associations regarding the different KAM disclosure measures. Our findings demonstrate the relevance of country attributes in the context of KAM reporting and provide a differentiated perspective on the implementation of the expanded audit report regulation across Europe.