Going Concern as an Epistemic Foundation of the Accounting-Audit-Taxation Relationship: Econometric Evidence and Interpretation through Marginal Effects

In the current context of increasing requirements regarding the transparency of financial reporting, the going-concern principle exceeds its strictly accounting dimension and becomes an epistemic reference point for the credibility of financial information, audit quality and the sustainability of business models. The study develops an interdisciplinary framework by investigating going concern from the perspective of the relationship between accounting, taxation and audit, with the aim of identifying the factors that influence the probability of maintaining the financial viability of companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange during 2018-2024. The research methodology uses the Ordered Logit econometric model, which is appropriate for the ordinal nature of the dependent variable concerning going concern, structured on three levels: discontinuity risk, moderate uncertainty and full continuity. To deepen the interpretation of the results, Average Marginal Effects (AME) were estimated, allowing the variation in the probabilities associated with each going-concern category to be quantified according to changes in the significant predictors. The empirical results reveal consistent and statistically significant marginal effects generated by the debt ratio, auditor type and audit opinion. The research contributes to the literature by integrating an epistemic perspective on the accounting-taxation-audit relationship with an applied econometric approach based on the interpretation of marginal effects.