Auditor choice prediction model using corporate governance and ownership attributes: Machine learning approach

Abstract

External auditor is one of the governance mechanisms in mitigating corporate managerial misconduct and thereby enhance the credibility of accounting information. Thus, the main objective of this study is to develop machine learning prediction model on auditor choice of the firm which signal the quality of auditing and financial reporting processes.This paper presents the fundamental knowledge on the design and implementation of machine learning model based on four selected algorithms tested on the real dataset of 2,262 firm-year observations of companies listed on Malaysian stock exchange from 2000 to 2007. The performance of each machine learning algorithm on the auditor choice dataset has been observed based on three groups of features selection namely firm characteristics, governance and ownership. The findings indicated that the machine learning models present better accuracy performance with ownership features selection mainly with the Naïve Bayes algorithm.