Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience

Research Article

Does Signing Auditor’s Reputational Promotion Ease the Financing Constraints of Audited Firms?

Table 1

Description of related variables.


Variable		Symbol	Definition

Dependent variable	SA index	SA	−0.737 × SIZE + 0.043 × SIZE² − 0.04 × AGE
	WW index	WW	−0.091 × CF₁ − 0.062 × DIVPOS + 0.021 × TLTD − 0.044 × LNTA + 0.102 × ISG − 0.035 × SG
	KZ index	KZ	−1.00191 × CF₂ + 3.13919 × TLTD − 39.36780 × TDIV − 1.31476 × CASH + 0.28264 × Tobin’s Q

Independent variable	Signing auditor reputational promotion	Auditor	A dummy variable that is assigned a value of 3 if the signing auditor won the honorary title of senior CPA in 2010, 2 if the auditor won in 2015, 1 if the auditor won in 2017, and 0 otherwise
Moderator variable	Big Four accounting firms in the world	BIG4	A dummy variable that is assigned a value of 1 when the accounting firm is one of the BIG4 firms and 0 otherwise
	Enterprise scale	SIZE	Natural logarithm of the total assets of an enterprise at the end of the period
	The nature of enterprise property rights	SOE	A dummy variable, which is assigned a value of 1 if the enterprise is state-owned and 0 otherwise

Control variable	Ratio of liabilities to assets	LEV	Total liabilities/total assets
	Cash flow from operations	CFO	Net cash flow from operating activities/total assets
	Corporate growth	Tobin’s Q	(Market value of equity + market value of net debt)/total assets at the end of the period
	Return on assets	ROA	Net profit/total average assets
	Company age	AGE	The natural logarithm of the number of years the company has been established
	Shareholding ratio of the largest shareholder	TOP1	Shareholding ratio of the largest shareholder disclosed in the corporate annual report
	Board of directors	BSIZE	The natural logarithm of the number of board members of a company
	Independent directors	OUTDIR	Number of independent directors/total number of directors
	Duality of general manager and chairman	DUAL	A dummy variable, which is assigned a value of 1 when the chairman and the general manager are the same person and 0 otherwise

Data source: collected and sorted by the authors. Note. SIZE = natural logarithm for the total assets of an enterprise at the end of the period; AGE = observed year-year of the listed; CF₁ = operating net cash flow; DIVPOS is a dummy variable, which is 1 if the firm pays dividends and 0 otherwise; TLTD = long-term liabilities/total assets; ISG is the industry sale growth rate; SG = operating revenue growth; CF₂ = operating net cash flow/total assets; TLTD = total liabilities/total assets; TDIV = cash dividend/total assets; CASH is cash holdings/total assets.