Does audit partners’ co-signing experience improve audit quality?

This study introduces a novel metric of audit expertise—the co-signing experience of a lead partner with other partners over the past five years—to explore its impact on audit quality. Our findings show that co-signing experience positively influences audit quality, evidenced by positive associations with modified audit opinions and negative associations with absolute discretionary current accruals and bank loan spreads. Such effects appear mainly for less experienced partners co-signing with experienced partners and are more pronounced for clients with highly complex audits. In addition, our results indicate that lead partners benefit not only from co-signing with “masters” (industry specialists) but also from non-masters (non-specialists). Together, these insights broaden partner-level research by highlighting new perspectives on the influence of co-signing experience.