Public Attention and Auditor Behavior: The Case of Hurun Rich List in China

Adverse client publicity can entail regulatory scrutiny over audited financial statements and impose political costs on auditors. We use the changes in client publicity caused by their controlling owners’ presence on the Hurun Rich List (the rich listing) in China to test the hypothesis that auditor conservatism increases with client publicity. Our evidence indicates auditors issue more adverse audit opinions to clients and charge higher fees following the rich listing events. Moreover, we observe that auditors strategically respond to clients with different attributes—for clients whose owners accumulated wealth in a more questionable manner, auditors choose more stringent audit reporting to better defend themselves from regulatory scrutiny; for clients without such attributes, auditors primarily rely on increasing audit fees to cope with any post-listing increase in audit risks. Our analyses also suggest the impacts of rich listings tend to be concentrated among large audit firms with stronger reputation concerns or among engagement auditors with more conservative reporting styles. By showing how auditors manage political risks associated with heightened public scrutiny, we contribute to both the auditing and political cost literature.     

Code of ethics quality and audit fees

Using a sample of U.S. firms from 2003 to 2018, we examine the effect of an audit client’s code of ethics quality on audit fees. We find that clients with a lower code of ethics quality pay significantly higher audit fees, suggesting that auditors perceive such clients as riskier and charge greater risk premiums. We also find that such clients have higher litigation risk and auditors spend greater effort when auditing such clients. Our study is among the first to demonstrate the role of a client’s code of ethics quality in audit pricing. Overall, our findings are consistent with codes of ethics being useful to auditors in assessing managers’ financial representations and providing value to firms.     

The impact of financial reporting flexibility on auditor risk judgement: Evidence from the implementation of FIN 46R

This paper investigates how auditors respond, in terms of their pricing and audit work, to a reduction of clients’ financial reporting discretion upon the implementation of FIN 46R, which requires firms to consolidate the variable interest entities (VIE) under their control. Using a difference-in-differences research design, we find that auditors charge relatively fewer audit fees and have shorter audit report lags for firms that are significantly affected by FIN 46R, compared to a group of control firms. This result concurs with the view that auditors react favorably to the reduction of clients’ financial reporting discretion. Our finding is concentrated among clients with higher accrual earnings management constraints, auditors with less client-specific knowledge, and auditors who have no recent experience of audit failures (e.g., severe client restatements). Our results are robust to alternative identifications of treatment and control samples, and our conclusion remains valid after controlling for the contemporaneous adoption of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act. We also show that the relatively reduced audit fees and audit effort do not lead to the deterioration of audit quality.     

An Investigation of Auditors’ Judgments When Companies Release Earnings Before Audit Completion

The majority of U.S. public companies release annual earnings prior to the completion of audit fieldwork. We investigate this phenomenon in a controlled experiment with audit partners and senior managers. We find that releasing earnings before completion of the audit pressures auditors to adopt the goals of management, thereby reducing the likelihood of post‐announcement audit‐adjustment recommendations. We also examine the effect of audit committee (AC) strength in improving auditors’ judgments after annual earnings are released. When ACs are actively involved in accounting issues and proactively communicating with auditors—characteristics currently lacking in most ACs—the negative effects on auditors’ judgments are completely mitigated. Our study provides evidence on potential unintended consequences of early release of earnings and the importance of investing in high‐quality ACs to mitigate adverse effects of client pressures on audit judgment and financial reporting quality.     

Employee firing costs and auditors’ going-concern opinions: Evidence from wrongful discharge laws

This paper examines the impact of employee firing costs on auditors’ going-concern (GC) reporting decisions by exploiting the wrongful discharge laws (WDLs) adopted by U.S. states. We find that auditors are more likely to issue GC opinions to financially-distressed clients headquartered in states that have adopted the laws, in particular the good faith exception, than to clients in states that have not. This finding is robust to controlling for the state-level economics, the strictness of legal liability rules, audit office fixed effects, as well as alternative definitions of financial distress and estimation methods. The impact is concentrated in labor-intensive clients and clients in industries with a higher proportion of nonunionized or permanent employees. We further find that the increased propensity to issue GC opinions is attenuated when the auditor is economically dependent on the client, and is driven by auditors who possess labor-specific expertise. Overall, these findings are consistent with higher firing costs increasing auditors’ propensity to issue GC opinions.     

The association between individual audit partners’ risk preferences and the composition of their client portfolios

We explore whether audit partners’ attitude towards risk, as measured by their personal criminal convictions, are reflected in the composition of their client portfolios. Analyzing a unique dataset of Swedish audit partners’ criminal convictions, we find that the clients of audit partners with criminal convictions are characterized by greater financial, governance, and reporting risk than those of audit partners without criminal convictions. Also, clients of audit partners with criminal convictions pay larger audit fees, on average, than those of auditors without criminal convictions.     

The effect of external audits of internal control over financial reporting on financial reporting for clients of Big 4, Second-tier,and small audit firms

The external audit of internal control over financial reporting (ICFR) is a very expensive and contentious aspect of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX). Larger public firms were first required to file a management report on and have an external audit of ICFR in 2004. Smaller public firms were first required to file a management report on ICFR in 2007 but are exempt from the audit requirement. Whereas most related prior research investigates the combined effect of management and auditor reports on financial reporting, this study examines the distinct effect of auditor reports on reporting quality. For companies audited by small auditors, we find evidence that financial reporting quality improves with an auditor report on ICFR. We find no evidence that auditor ICFR reports improve reporting quality for clients of Big 4 or Second-tier audit firms. Our study adds to the debate on the applicability of SOX Section 404 to smaller firms.     

The Impact of Consulting Services on Audit Quality: An Experimental Approach

We use experimental markets to examine whether providing consulting services to a non‐audit client impacts audit quality. Our paper directly addresses concerns raised by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board that the largest public accounting firms’ growth in their consulting practices threatens audit quality. We conduct an experiment proposed using a registration‐based editorial process. We compare a baseline where the auditor does not provide consulting services to conditions where auditors provide consulting to audit clients or where auditors only provide consulting services to non‐audit clients. Our unique design provides evidence on whether providing consulting to non‐audit clients strengthens the salience of a client‐cooperative social norm that reduces audit quality. We do not find differences in audit quality by condition in our planned analysis, however we find greater variation in audit quality in the conditions where auditors provide consulting services compared to the baseline. In unplanned analyses, our results suggest providing consulting services increases auditor cooperation with managers, increasing audit quality when managers prefer high audit quality and decreasing audit quality when managers prefer low audit quality.     

Audit Pricing of Shared Leadership

This study explores audit implications of shared leadership in client firms. Analyzing data from 2002 to 2013 of Korean listed companies, we find that auditors spend fewer audit hours and charge lower audit fees for clients with multiple CEOs. Additional tests reveal that the lower audit fees for co-CEO clients are likely attributable to reduced audit effort rather than to reduced hourly rates. We also document that firms with co-CEOs exhibit better-reporting quality than do firms with a solitary CEO. In sum, this article presents evidence that mutual monitoring via co-CEO appointments assures high-quality financial reporting of audit clients, and thus leads to reduced audit fees.     

Accounting misstatements following lawsuits against auditors

This study investigates whether an auditor's experience of litigation in the recent past affects subsequent financial reporting quality. At the audit firm level, we find accounting misstatements occur significantly less (more) often after audit firms are sued (not sued). At the audit office level, the negative association between past litigation and future misstatements is stronger for offices who were directly implicated in the litigation than for the non-accused offices of sued audit firms. Therefore, the litigation experiences of both audit firms and audit offices are incrementally significant predictors of future financial reporting quality.     

审计师收取客户债务风险溢价了吗?

已有研究发现,公司债务风险越高,审计师收取的审计费用越高;然而,审计费用提高的原因可能是审计投入的增加,也可能是审计师收取客户公司的债务风险溢价。由于缺少审计投入的数据,已有研究无法回答审计师是否收取客户公司债务风险溢价的问题。本文以我国A股上市公司为研究样本,运用我国独到的审计工时数据,就此展开相关问题研究。研究发现,在控制了审计投入之后,客户债务风险与审计费用显著正相关,表明审计师收取了客户公司的债务风险溢价。进一步研究表明,审计师对财务状况较差和治理较差的公司以及非国有企业收取更高的债务风险溢价,规模较小的会计师事务所收取的债务风险溢价高于规模较大的会计师事务所。     

Busy auditors,financial reporting timeliness and quality

We investigate whether audit partners with multiple clients are able to complete their audits in a timely fashion, an important but largely unexplored area of academic research. One view is that having multiple clients increases the knowledge and experience of the audit partner resulting in a more efficient and therefore, quicker audit. On the other hand, having multiple clients may over-burden an audit partner resulting in a slower audit process and longer completion times. We find that audit partners with multiple clients take longer to complete their annual audit. More importantly, we also find that companies with busy auditors who take longer to complete their audits also have poorer levels of financial reporting quality. Additionally, in terms of consequences for busy auditors, firms with lengthy audit report lag switched their auditors the next year suggesting that busy audit partners may lose clients if their workload is excessive and they are not able to maintain audit quality. Our results are robust to alternative measures for both audit report lag and audit partner busyness and a range of endogeneity tests. We also undertake simultaneous quantile regression to assess changes in audit report lag depending on the number of audit clients per partner where we find preliminary evidence of a knowledge spill-over effect. Consequently, our results have implications for companies, audit firms, regulators and other key stakeholders.     

Is there a relation between audit fee cuts during the global financial crisis and banks’ financial reporting quality?

As a result of the global financial crisis (GFC), several audit clients were able to negotiate lower audit fees for the years 2008 and 2009. However, the PCAOB has expressed concern that lower audit fees might lead to lower audit effort and lower audit quality and financial reporting quality. This study examines the relation between audit fee cuts and banks’ financial reporting quality. Specifically, we focus on earnings management via loan loss provisions (LLP), the relation between current period LLP and future loan charge-offs, i.e., LLP validity, and the timely recognition of loan losses. For banks audited by Big 4 auditors, we find that income-increasing abnormal LLP are decreasing in audit fee cuts and LLP validity is increasing in audit fee cuts. For banks audited by non-Big 4 auditors, LLP validity is higher for banks that received a fee cut of more than 25% relative to other banks audited by non-Big 4 auditors. We do not observe an association between timely loan loss recognition and cuts in audit fees except for banks audited by non-Big 4 auditors and exempt from internal control audits where a fee cut of more than 25% is associated with less timely loan loss recognition. Overall, the findings suggest that Big 4 auditors constrained earnings management via LLP in banks that received cuts in audit fees. Our findings have important implications for regulators, investors, and others.     

Responses by Australian auditors to the global financial crisis

We examine the impact of the global financial crisis (GFC) on auditor behaviour in Australia. Using a sample of listed companies, we examine whether the GFC impacted the propensity of auditors to issue going concern modifications and increased audit effort as reflected in audit fees and audit reporting lag. Controlling for client characteristics, we find an increase in the propensity to issue going concern opinions during the period 2008–2009 compared with the period 2005–2007 and that Big N auditors responded to the GFC earlier than non‐Big N auditors. In relation to audit effort, we find evidence of increased audit fees during the period 2008–2009 compared with the period 2005–2007. There is, however, no evidence of increased audit reporting lags during the GFC.     

Does size matter? The influence of large clients on office-level auditor reporting decisions

Large clients create an economic dependence that may cause auditors to compromise their independence and report favorably to retain valuable clients. Economic dependence is measured as a client's size relative to the size of the office that contracts for the audit and issues the audit report. We find no evidence economic dependence causes Big Five auditors to report more favorably for larger clients in their offices. However, larger clients also pose greater litigation risk, and we do find that Big 5 auditors report more conservatively for larger clients, suggesting that reputation protection dominates auditor behavior.     

Determinants of auditor changes for non-accelerated filers

Significant accounting scandals and the imminent collapse of Arthur Andersen in 2001 precipitated a period of heightened regulatory response, most notably the enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. In the years that followed, the Securities and Exchange Commission created a separate class of non-accelerated filers (companies with public float of up to $75 million) and provided these companies with significant regulatory relief from certain financial reporting disclosure and auditing requirements, including the extension of scaled disclosure to these companies in 2007. Over the period of 2001 through 2007, as non-accelerated clients anticipated and responded to their different and evolving regulatory regime, audit firms were adjusting to the increased concentration in their market, a new monitoring structure, and significant changes to the scope of their work. We examine whether auditor–client misalignment is a significant determinant of auditor change during this period, particularly for non-accelerated filers, as large auditors sought to rebalance their client portfolios. We find evidence that auditor–client misalignment increases the likelihood of auditor change (resignation and dismissal) for non-accelerated, but not accelerated, filers. We also find that auditor–client misalignment increases the likelihood of downward changes to third-tier auditors for non-accelerated, but not accelerated, filers.     

Effects of audit partners on clients’ business risk disclosure

We empirically investigate audit engagement partners’ involvement in business risk disclosure. Specifically, we examine whether the quality of business risk disclosure is influenced by engagement partner tenure and knowledge. We also examine whether the effects of partner tenure and knowledge are similar for Big 4 audit firms and non-Big 4 firms. Since fiscal year 2003, listed companies in Japan have been required to disclose business risk information. Although the business risk information is not audited, auditors concerned about their audit quality may seek to influence clients’ business risk disclosure practices. Giving advice to management on the narrative business risk disclosure can contribute to improving the perceived value of the auditor’s services which can be a competitive advantage. Using a sample of Japanese listed companies from 2003 to 2010, we find that if the engagement partners’ tenure is shorter, a company discloses more business risk information and the disclosure is more detailed. Furthermore, companies with audit partners who have a larger number of client engagements disclose larger amounts of business risk information in more detail. However, the engagement partner effects are mitigated if they belong to a Big 4 firm.     

Audit Reporting of Big 4 Versus Non-Big 4 Auditors: The Case of Ex-Andersen Clients

This paper examines audit reporting of Big 4 auditors versus non-Big 4 auditors for ex-Andersen clients and other clients. It suggests that ex-Andersen clients are more risky than other clients and are able to exert more influence than other clients on non-Big 4 auditors because they are larger in size than other non-Big 4 auditees. In addition, Big 4 auditors are more risk-averse and able to withstand clients' pressure than non-Big 4 auditors. The results show that Big 4 auditors are more likely than non-Big 4 auditors to issue going-concern opinions to ex-Andersen clients or restrict the level of discretionary accruals of those clients compared with other clients. Further, ex-Andersen clients of Big 4 auditors would have had a lower likelihood of receiving going-concern opinions or higher levels of discretionary accruals had reporting practices for other clients been applied. Ex-Andersen clients of non-Big 4 auditors would have had a higher likelihood of going-concern opinions or lower levels of discretionary accruals. Hence, the suggestion to reduce the Big 4 concentration in the audit market by allowing non-Big 4 firms a larger market share should be viewed prudently. Overall, these results are consistent with the suggestion that litigation risk and client pressure are important factors in audit reporting.