Table III

Definition of variables

VariableDefinition
Tax avoidanceIt is the ratio of ETR to STR
SpecialistIt is an indicator variable that is equal to one if the ratio of the total fees collected by the auditor for the industry to the total fees collected is the highest and zero otherwise (Jha and Chen, 2014)
Audit tenurethe number of consecutive years that an audit firm undertakes the responsibility of a company’s auditing (Myers et al., 2003)
Audit opinionIt equals one if the auditor issues an unqualified opinion without any additional language and zero otherwise (Jha and Chen, 2014)
Audit feeIt is the natural logarithm of the total audit fee of the external auditor (Jha and Chen, 2014)
Days to signIt is the logarithm of lag between the signature date of the audit opinion and the date of fiscal year-end (Jha and Chen, 2014)
AccrualsIt is defined as the absolute value of total accruals scaled by total assets (Bryan and Mason, 2016)
Firm sizeIt is the natural logarithm of the total assets of a company (Salehi, Tarighi and Rezanezhad, 2018)
ROAReturn on Assets is calculated by dividing a company’s annual earnings by its total assets (Salehi, Tahervafaei and Tarighi, 2018)
DividendIt is the natural logarithm of a payment made by a corporation to its shareholders, usually as a distribution of profits
Firm ageIt is the logarithm of the number of years since the company has been listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (Salehi, Tahervafaei and Tarighi, 2018)
LeverageIt is calculated through long-term debt scaled by total assets (Salehi, Tahervafaei and Tarighi, 2018)
LossIt is an indicator variable which equals one if the net income is negative and, zero otherwise (Salehi, Tahervafaei and Tarighi, 2018)
Industry indicatorIt is based on the two-digit SIC code

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