公司股价崩盘风险影响审计费用吗?北大核心CSSCISSCI

2008年全球金融危机和2015年我国股市的大幅波动凸显了股价崩盘风险的重大研究价值,现有研究主要关注了股价崩盘风险的动因,而忽视了对其经济后果的直接检验。本文从审计费用角度研究股价崩盘风险的经济后果,旨在探讨审计师在审计决策时是否以及如何使用客户股价崩盘风险这一信息。研究发现,公司股价崩盘风险越高,审计师收取的审计费用越高,这表明审计师在做出审计决策时的确考虑股价崩盘风险信息;并且,公司股价崩盘风险与审计费用的正向关系在公司为国企、未完成股权分置改革、审计师规模较大以及公司所处地区市场化程度较高时更显著。进一步研究发现,公司股价崩盘风险越高,审计师花费的审计时间越长,这表明公司股价崩盘导致增加的审计费用包含了对审计努力的价格补偿。本文的研究结果表明,股价崩盘存在明显的溢出效应,会影响审计师的审计定价决策。这从审计师角度丰富了股价崩盘风险经济后果的相关研究。     

审计师行业专长与审计市场研究综述及启示

审计师行业专长是影响审计质量以及审计收费等审计市场绩效的一个重要因素 ,遗憾的是国内审计师行业专长研究几乎还是一片空白。本文对国外审计师行业专长与审计市场关系的研究文献进行了回顾和总结 ,内容涉及审计师行业专长的衡量、审计师行业专长与审计师行为、审计师行业专长与审计收费、审计师行业专长与审计质量等四个方面。在此基础上 ,本文进一步考察了国内审计师行业专长发展和研究的现状 ,并结合两个审计失败的案例指出发展和研究国内审计师行业专长的重要意义。     

季度经营信息披露与审计收费——非财务信息披露监管创新的溢出效应研究

本文利用上海证券交易所强制要求相关行业上市公司按季度披露经营数据这一政策变化,构建双重差分（DID）模型对季度经营信息披露与审计收费的关系进行检验。研究发现,季度经营信息披露后,审计师对公司的审计收费显著降低。机制检验表明,审计收费下降的现象更可能出现在季度经营信息披露前审计投入和审计风险较高的公司中。截面研究进一步发现,季度经营信息中披露产销量指标的公司、能力较弱的事务所审计的公司及民营企业的审计收费下降更为显著。本文的研究结论说明,季度经营信息披露这一非财务信息监管创新对审计市场带来了积极的溢出影响,从外部监管视角为审计市场变革提供了重要启示。     

关于舞弊审计环境的机会和动机

所谓舞弊审计,是指审计机构和审计师通过一定的程序,对隐藏在控制系统、管理系统和财务报告中的故意虚假作为,采取一定的手段和方法把它揭示出来,呈报给管理当局或报告使用者.随着证券市场舞弊案件的增加,社会要求审计人员揭示舞弊的呼声高涨起来,舞弊审计重新成为审计职业界的主要职责之一,并与验证财务报表的公允性之鉴证责任一起组成民间审计责任的内容.     

财务重述对审计意见影响的实证研究

上市公司财务重述会引起审计、资本市场明显反应,验证财务重述在错报期和重述期、不同特征对审计意见选择的影响,可以帮助审计师在鉴证财务重述问题时做出正确决策,同时敦促上市公司减少和规范财务重述行为,提高信息质量.选取2015—2018年沪市A股上市公司为基础样本,运用Logistic模型从错报期和重述期分别检验财务重述及其科目、数目、幅度等对审计意见的影响.研究发现:财务重述影响非标准审计意见的出具,且重述期更加明显;财务重述数量在错报期和重述期均对审计意见有显著影响,重述幅度、会计问题和技术问题类仅在重述期容易收到非标准审计意见,且技术类问题更加显著.     

审计质量的动态控制——基于产权保护学说和XBRL连续审计研究

<正>一、审计质量的含义及衡量标准学术界对审计质量下了很多种定义,较为权威的是DeAngeb(1981)的定义:审计质量是审计师发现并且报告出财务报告错弊的联合概率。审计质量的不可观测性使得人们用很多替代指标表示审计质量。目前,衡量审计质量的方法(替代变量),包括事务所规模、操纵性应计盈余、审计收费等。     

我国企业社会责任报告审计研究

近年来,我国企业社会责任报告的审计问题日益受到广泛关注.文章阐述了企业社会责任报告审计的意义,并对全球500强中的美国、日本企业的社会责任报告审计状况进行了分析,进而在分析我国企业社会责任报告审计现状的基础上,提出了我国企业社会责任报告审计的基本框架.     

影响事务所审计质量的外部因素分析

在审计关系的多代理人结构中,审计师处于投资公众-审计师-被审计客户这一双重代理关系中,客户对审计服务的有效需求和投资公众赋予的法律责任最终决定了审计服务质量水平。执业准则是审计师的行为规范,如果审计准则的规定比较含糊,就会增加审计师行为的弹性,审计师就可以使遵从企业意愿的行为合法化,不会担心招致监管部门的惩罚,这些都会使审计质量受到影响。     

浅谈工程审计风险及其防范

伴随着中国特色社会主义经济改革的不断深入,社会法制建设的不断健全,我国的政治经济发生了巨大的变化,但是审计风险却并没有消除。法律规定审计报告真实性、公正性等责任要由审计师来承担,但是审计报告呈现的是审计师根据审计证据发表的一些看法和意见,这样有失公允的事情就在所难免了,结果就是审计师要承担其中的审计风险。所以,每一位合格的审计师都应该加强对审计风险的防范意识,重视风险,防范风险。而审计工作中比较常见的工程审计也同样存在着这样那样的审计风险,我们一定要高度重视这样的风险。下面本文将从工程审计的定义出发,和大家探讨一下工程审计的一些风险及其防范措施。     

我国企业社会责任报告审计的基本框架初探

近年来,我国企业社会责任报告的审计问题受到广泛关注.文章阐述了企业社会责任报告的编制规范、企业社会责任报告审计的意义以及我国企业社会责任报告审计的基本框架.     

An Empirical Investigation of Audit Fees,Nonaudit Fees,and Audit Committees*

This study examines the association between audit committee characteristics and the ratio of nonaudit service (NAS) fees to audit fees, using data gathered under the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC's) fee disclosure rules. Issues related to NAS fees have been of concern to practitioners, regulators, and academics for a number of years. Prior research suggests that audit committees possessing certain characteristics are important participants in the process of managing the client‐auditor relationship. We hypothesize that audit committees that are independent and active financial monitors have incentives to limit NAS fees (relative to audit fees) paid to incumbent auditors, in an effort to enhance auditor independence in either appearance or fact. Our analysis using a sample of 538 firms indicates that audit committees comprised solely of independent directors meeting at least four times annually are significantly and negatively associated with the NAS fee ratio. This evidence is consistent with audit committee members perceiving a high level of NAS fees in a negative light and taking actions to decrease the NAS fee ratio.     

Market Structure and Audit Fees: A Local Analysis*

This study conducts a local analysis of the relation between market structure and audit fees. The research question of interest to us is how audit fees are determined by each practicing local office, after taking into account the auditor's own position in a local market and the influence exerted by his or her clients. Appealing to the economic theories of monopoly and monopsony power, we hypothesize a positive audit fee‐concentration relation, and a negative audit fee‐client influence relation. Results indicate that auditor market concentration is positively associated with the non‐Big 6 audit fees but is unrelated to the Big 6 audit fees. Evidence is mixed concerning the client influence hypothesis. When this construct is proxied by the number of rival auditors operating within a geographic area centered on the municipality, the prediction of negative audit fee‐client influence relation is strongly supported for both groups of auditors. Results are much weaker using measures developed based on the relative importance of a municipal client to its auditor's audit portfolio. The issues addressed in this study are important at a time when the Canadian municipal sector is undergoing major changes because of municipal amalgamation, altering the underlying market structure for audit services and the bargaining position of a municipality vis‐Ã‐vis its auditor. More broadly speaking, our analysis implies that when assessing an auditor's report for signs of client pressure, the professional oversight bodies and regulatory authorities need to consider the relative, rather than the absolute, bargaining position of the client in question.     

Learning by Doing and Audit Quality*

In this study, we present a nonstrategic, dynamic Bayesian model in which auditors' learning on the job and their choice of professional services jointly affect audit quality. While performing audits over time, auditors accumulate client‐specific knowledge so that their posterior beliefs about clients are updated and become more precise (that is, precision is our surrogate for audit quality) — what we call the learning effect. In addition, auditors can enrich their knowledge accumulation by performing nonaudit services (NAS) that, in fact, may influence clients' managerial decisions — what we call the business advisory effect. This advisory effect permits auditors to anticipate and to learn about changes in clients' business models, which in turn improves their advisory capacity. These dual “learning” and “advisory” effects are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. The advisory effect of NAS may increase or reduce auditors' engagement risk. We show that large professional fees can induce auditors to provide NAS that increase engagement risk and diminish audit quality. However, when NAS reduce engagement risk and increase audit quality, auditors may provide NAS without charging clients. The feature that distinguishes our study — the interdependence between the learning and advisory effects — provides new insight into the trade‐off between audit fees and audit quality. Consequently, our analysis helps explain why the scope of the audit has evolved over time and why the boundaries between audit and NAS are constantly shifting. A recent example of such a shift is that the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act adds control attestation to audits for public companies traded in U.S. markets.     

Pricing of Initial Audit Engagements by Large and Small Audit Firms*

We investigate the extent to which auditors of U.S. companies reduce fees on initial audit engagements (“fee discounting”). We hypothesize that rivalries among sellers, in terms of client turnover and price competition, are more intense among small audit firms. The data support this hypothesis. New clients account for 34 percent of all clients for small audit firms, but only 9 percent of all clients for large audit firms. We theorize that differences in client turnover rates between large and small audit firms can be explained by the market structure of the audit industry, which consists of an oligopolistic segment dominated by a few large audit firms and an atomistic segment composed of many small audit firms. We further hypothesize and confirm that fee discounting is more extensive in the atomistic sector, and our results confirm this hypothesis. Our analysis of audit fee changes indicates that clients who switch auditors within the atomistic sector receive on average a discount of 24 percent over the prior auditor's fee. However, clients who switch auditors within the oligopolistic sector receive on average a discount of only 4 percent. Given that price competition is known to be less intense in oligopolistic markets than in atomistic markets, we believe that market structure theory can explain why fee discounting is lower when larger audit firms compete for clients.     

Audit Hours and Unit Audit Price of Industry Specialist Auditors: Evidence from Korea

Higher audit fees associated with auditor industry specialization could represent higher unit price charged by industry specialist auditors (ISAs) or the provision of a greater quantity of audit services. This study exploits a field setting in Korea, where the disclosure of audit hours is required in company annual reports, and finds that ISAs charge significantly higher total audit fees but also expend significantly greater audit hours than non‐ISAs. When audit fees and hours are considered together, the unit audit price of ISAs is significantly lower than that of non‐ISAs. This indicates that higher total audit fees associated with ISAs are likely to be attributable to greater audit hours associated with ISAs. However, greater audit hours for ISAs may suggest higher audit quality or may simply indicate that the additional audit work performed by ISAs is conducted by relatively cheaper junior auditors. Our work provides an alternative explanation for the higher total audit fees documented in the previous studies.     

The Earnings Quality Information Content of Dividend Policies and Audit Pricing

Recent studies indicate dividends are associated with higher‐quality earnings. Our study extends the literature by examining whether dividends' information is associated with auditors' assessment of their clients' earnings quality. Our results show that auditors charge lower fees to dividend‐paying clients than to nondividend‐paying clients and the average fee discount ranges from 6.0 to 10.6 percent. More importantly, we find dividends have an interactive effect with respect to earnings persistence and earnings manipulation: the negative association between audit fees and earnings persistence is more pronounced for dividend firms; and dividend payouts mitigate the positive relation between earnings manipulation risk and audit fees. Our results imply dividends reduce audit risk by enhancing clients' earnings quality information. We contribute to the literature by showing that auditors reflect the earnings quality information content of firms' dividend policies in their pricing decisions.     

“金税三期”税收征管对上市公司审计费用的影响

税收征管作为公司外部治理手段,能够作用于公司经营环节,进而影响审计师面临的业务风险和审计风险,由此影响到公司的审计费用。但目前鲜有文献研究税收征管对公司审计费用的影响。本文借助"金税三期"工程这一"准自然实验",以2010—2019年A股上市公司为样本并使用双重差分法,研究发现"金税三期"工程提高了上市公司的审计费用。机制分析表明,"金税三期"工程推高了上市公司实际税率,降低了上市公司的盈利水平,提高了审计师的业务风险,进而提高了审计费用。同时,"金税三期"工程强化涉税信息监管,提高了上市公司会计信息质量,降低了审计师的审计风险,从而降低了审计费用。综合来看前者对审计费用的影响大于后者,导致了上市公司审计费用的提高。进一步分析发现,"金税三期"工程对审计费用的这一影响,在非国有上市公司和由非国际四大会计师事务所审计的上市公司中更为显著。     

Accounting Comparability,Audit Effort,and Audit Outcomes

Accounting comparability among peer firms in the same industry reflects the similarity and the relatedness of firms’ operating environments and financial reporting. From the perspectives of “inherent audit risk” and “external information efficiency,” comparability is helpful for auditors in assessing client audit risk and lowers the costs of information acquisition, processing, and testing. I posit that the availability of information about comparable clients helps improve audit efficiency and accuracy. Empirical results show that comparability is negatively related to audit effort (surrogated by audit fees and audit delay). Moreover, comparability is negatively associated with the likelihood of audit opinion errors. These findings are robust to different specifications of regression models, particularly for the “endogeneity” issues due to the possible reverse causality that auditor style might influence client firms’ comparability. In sum, the study shows that accounting comparability enhances the utility of accounting information for external audits.     

The Influence of Nonaudit Service Revenues and Client Pressure on External Auditors' Decisions to Rely on Internal Audit*

This paper investigates how external auditor provision of significant nonaudit services and client pressure to use the work of internal audit influence external auditors' use of internal auditors' work. More specifically, we study how external audit evidence gathering choices are influenced by nonaudit fees and client pressure. Our research is motivated by an observation that the magnitude of nonaudit services provided to audit clients introduces the risk that client management may leverage its position with the external auditor and potentially affect the audit process. We address this issue by extending prior research and focusing on the importance of various explanatory variables, including nonaudit service revenues, client pressure, internal audit quality, and coordination, to the external auditor's decision to rely on the work of internal audit. We use data primarily obtained through surveys completed by internal and external auditors. The survey responses represent 74 separate audit engagements. Our findings reveal that when significant nonaudit services are not provided to a client, internal audit quality and the level of internal‐external auditor coordination positively affect auditors' internal audit reliance decisions. However, when the auditor provides significant nonaudit services to the client, internal audit quality and the extent of internal ‐ external auditor coordination do not significantly affect auditors' reliance decisions. Furthermore, when significant nonaudit services are provided, client pressure significantly increases the extent of internal audit reliance. Thus, external auditors appear to be more affected by client pressure and less concerned about internal audit quality and coordination when making internal audit reliance decisions at clients for whom significant nonaudit services are also provided.