Positive Influences of Governance, Legal, Educational and Market Factors on Audit Environments

Abstract

As companies trade beyond their national borders, corporate boards need to evaluate the effectiveness of audit regulatory environments in foreign countries. A model with which to assess the strength of financial audit and reporting standards of individual countries would be beneficial. This study develops and tests such a model. Many factors are identified which impact upon financial assurance environments. These include corporate governance, legal, educational and market factors. A thirteen variable model was devised to predict the strength of a country's financial assurance environment. An actual score for this was obtained from a World Economic Forum report. Using the geographical area of sub-Saharan Africa, as this contains a range of economies from mature to developing, the model was tested on 28 countries. Eight of the thirteen variables were significant, proving that governance, legal, educational and market factors all impact positively on a country's audit regulatory environment. Variations in individual countries' scores are discussed. The implications are that a model can be developed and used by corporate boards to compare countries' audit environments before deciding where to trade.