The moderating effect of joint audit on the relationship between the readability of financial statements footnotes and audit effort: evidence from Egypt

This research examines the effect of the readability of financial statements footnotes on audit efforts. Furthermore, it examines the moderation role of voluntary joint auditing in this relationship. The results show that generally, auditors respond to complex footnotes by increasing audit efforts through longer audit report lag and higher audit fees. In addition, the findings reveal a significant negative moderation role of joint auditing on the relationship between the readability of footnotes and audit fees, whereas there are no incremental effects of joint auditing on the relationship between readability and audit report lag. This research contributes to the auditing literature by providing evidence on the informativeness of the qualitative characteristics of financial reports to audit engagements. It also represents interdisciplinary business research, using qualitative and quantitative research methods besides connecting linguistics to auditing research.