Creative Commons

This dissertation was written as part of the MSc in International Accounting, Auditing and Financial Management at the International Hellenic University. The purpose of our study is to investigate the determinants of voluntary audit in the EU. In the following pages, we began to focus on the 4 EU countries (Germany, UK, France, Italy), member countries of the G7 group and with the highest GDPs among the EU countries, and due to data restrictions decided to proceed with only Italy. The prior literature and relevant researches helped us in our effort to focus on some key factors that affect the decision of voluntary audit. According to these researches some of the most common and significant drivers for voluntary audit are the firm size, the ownership structure and the debt accompanied by potential agency conflicts and internal control demands due to a separation of the management and the ownership of the company.