The Moderator Role of Auditor's Expertise in the Industry on the Relationship between Characteristics of the Audit Committee and Audit Report Lag

Timeliness is a fundamental feature of the relevance of financial reporting information to managers, enabling them to make informed business unit decisions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of the moderator of auditor's expertise on the relationship between the audit committee's characteristics and the delay in the audit report. This research is from the point of view of applied research type and the point of view of nature and method, including descriptive and correlational research. The research sample includes 135 companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange in the years 2013 to 2017. After controlling the control variables, the hypothesis test's findings showed that the auditor's specialization in the industry negatively correlates the relationship between the audit committee's independence and the audit committee's size and the delay in the audit report.