The Impact of Factors Related to the Audit of Financial Statements on Stock Returns: The Case of the Tunisian Market

This paper focuses on the analysis of the reactions of stock prices following the announcement of financial statements. Our contribution is to study the importance of variables related to the audit in explaining the reactions of stock returns. On the theoretical level, we have based our study on the theory of market information efficiency, the agency theory, signaling theory and corporate governance. Empirically, we used the event study method to test for abnormal reactions in stock prices following the announcement of financial statements, on a sample of 48 Tunisian listed companies. Our results show that the audit quality, the auditor's opinion and the co-commissioning have a joint impact on the evolution of stock prices. However, the recurrence of audit engagement has no effect.