社会化网络媒体关注与审计费用—基于微博媒体数据的分析

以2012-2014年创业板上市公司数据为研究对象,抓取新浪微博公众号上对被审计企业负面报道的关键词,研究了社会化网络媒体的负面报道对审计费用的影响。研究发现,媒体对上市公司的态度越负面其审计费用越高;但重复负面报道对审计费用的影响却是无效的。另外,相比“十大”会计师事务所,非“十大”会计师事务所对被审计单位负面消息更加敏感。在被审计单位被媒体负面报道后,新任会计师事务所会要求更高的审计费用。上期审计意见为非标意见对审计费用有正向影响,但其并没有增强媒体关注对于审计费用的影响效果。     

审计意见影响因素实证研究

基于2004-2007年上市公司财务数据,研究了审计意见的影响因素。公司的盈利能力、偿债能力对于审计意见类型有较大影响;ST公司及违规公司更可能获得非标准审计意见;而会计师事务所的规模与审计意见并不显著相关。     

Reconciling Financial Information at Varied Levels of Aggregation*

Financial statements summarize a firm's fiscal position using only a limited number of accounts. Readers often interpret financial statements in conjunction with other information, some of which may be aggregated in a different way (or not at all). This paper exploits properties of the double‐entry accounting system to provide a systematic approach to reconciling diverse financial data. The key is the ability to represent the double‐entry system by network flows and, thereby, access well‐recognized network optimization techniques. Two specific uses are investigated: the reconciliation of audit evidence with management‐prepared financial statements, and the creation of transaction‐level financial ratios.     

Does Audit Committee Accounting Expertise Help to Promote Audit Quality? Evidence from Auditor Reporting of Internal Control Weaknesses

In this study, we examine whether audit committee accounting expertise helps to promote audit quality by motivating auditors to conduct diligent internal control audits and make appropriate internal control assessments because audit committee accounting expertise safeguards auditors from dismissal following adverse internal control opinions. Among clients with existing and likely internal control material weaknesses (as proxied by future restatements of audited financial statements), we find a greater likelihood of adverse internal control audit opinions when the audit committee has greater accounting expertise (measured by the proportion of accounting experts on the audit committee). Among all clients, we find a lower likelihood of subsequent auditor dismissal following an adverse internal control audit opinion when the audit committee has greater accounting expertise. In further analyses, we find that this lower likelihood of subsequent auditor dismissal occurs when at least two audit committee members possess accounting expertise. We also find some evidence that CFO influence (but not CEO influence) over the audit committee negates the increased likelihood of adverse internal control opinions when internal control material weaknesses likely exist, as well as the decreased likelihood of auditor dismissal following adverse internal control opinions. These findings have important implications for regulators and corporate nominating committees interested in promoting audit committee effectiveness.     

试论现代风险导向审计应用的问题与对策

企业与外界环境的联系在加强，具有内向性的审计模式的局限性日益突出，财务报表舞弊案频频曝光，迫使审计界将目光聚焦于风险导向审计模式。与国外相比，目前我国对现代风险导向审计这一先进、新兴的审计技术的理论研究和实务运用存在一定差距。可以从审计外部职业环境、注册会计师和会计师事务所方面作出改进，以推广现代风险导向审计在我国的应用。     

An Examination of Factors Affecting Audit Practice Development*

In this study, we examine the possibility that audit managers' judgments may be affected by practice development objectives. Given the competitive nature of public accounting, the extent to which auditors are inclined to be aggressive in the domain of practice development may be a function of their superiors' preferences. This study builds on the exploratory work of Hooks, Cheramy, and Sinich 1994 and Asare, Hackenbrack, and Knechel 1994 by examining the delicate balance that exists between a public accounting firm's need to “grow its business” and its need to maintain its objectivity and professionalism. An experiment is conducted to determine whether the auditor's willingness to tender a bid on an engagement is affected by (1) the nature of the auditor-auditee relationship (i.e., do existing clients receive the same treatment as potential clients?), or (2) the audit partner's aggressiveness with respect to practice development, which also includes elements of ethics and competence. Seventy-four audit managers from two Big-Six firms participated in the study. The results indicate that the type of client (current or potential) and the type of partner (more or less aggressive with respect to practice development) significantly affected the auditors' judgments. Specifically, subjects in the “current client” condition, as well as those who are accountable to a more aggressive partner, are more likely to recommend bidding for the client. The experimental results of this study are based on a case where the client was proposing a relatively aggressive position with respect to accounting for research and development (R&D) costs. Our findings also suggest that the judgements related to bidding on the client are not independent of the auditor's willingness to accept the client's accounting treatment. These results also provide further evidence that the influence of accountability is important in the professional audit environment.     

The Effect of Audit Quality on Earnings Management*

This study examines the relation between audit quality and earnings management. Consistent with prior research, we treat audit quality as a dichotomous variable and assume that Big Six auditors are of higher quality than non-Big Six auditors. Earnings management is captured by discretionary accruals that are estimated using a cross-sectional version of the Jones 1991 model. Prior literature suggests that auditors are more likely to object to management's accounting choices that increase earnings (as opposed to decrease earnings) and that auditors are more likely to be sued when they are associated with financial statements that overstate earnings (as compared to understate earnings). Therefore, we hypothesize that clients of non-Big Six auditors report discretionary accruals that increase income relatively more than the discretionary accruals reported by clients of Big Six auditors. This hypothesis is supported by evidence from a sample of 10,379 Big Six and 2,179 non-Big Six firm years. Specifically, clients of non-Big Six auditors report discretionary accruals that are, on average, 1.5-2.1 percent of total assets higher than the discretionary accruals reported by clients of Big Six auditors. Also, consistent with earnings management, we find that the mean and median of the absolute value of discretionary accruals are greater for firms with non-Big Six auditors. This result also indicates that lower audit quality is associated with more “accounting flexibility”.     

Audit Office Reputation Shocks from Gains and Losses of Major Industry Clients

Our study reports evidence on the dynamic effects of client switches on auditor reputations and fee premia. Offices of large accounting firms that lose (gain) major industry clients experience a reputation shock leading to more same‐industry client losses (gains) over the next two years. There is also a shift in audit fees charged to other same‐industry clients when a major client loss (gain) results in an audit office losing (gaining) city‐level industry leadership. A major client loss or gain also creates a short‐term capacity shock to an audit office's ability to supply high‐quality audits. However, there is no evidence of reputation spillovers to other‐industry clients in the audit office, or to clients in other offices of the accounting firm.     

“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。     

Do Accounting Firm Consulting Revenues Affect Audit Quality? Evidence from the Pre‐ and Post‐SOX Eras

In recent years, public accounting firms have experienced a steady increase in the proportion of their revenues generated from consulting services. Although growth in consulting revenue following the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) has been generated primarily from services provided to nonaudit clients, regulators have expressed concerns about the potential implications of this increase for audit quality. In contrast, accounting firms assert that the expertise developed by their consulting professionals helps them to provide better quality audits. We examine the relation between the proportion of accounting firm consulting revenue to total revenue and audit quality and investor perceptions of audit quality. Because SOX drastically altered the source of consulting revenues for public accounting firms, we also separately examine these relations in the pre‐ and post‐SOX eras. We find evidence suggesting that before SOX, higher proportions of audit firm consulting revenues negatively impacted both audit quality and investor perceptions of audit quality. However, we do not find a statistically significant association between audit firm consulting revenues and either audit quality or investor perceptions of audit quality following SOX. Our analyses suggest that even if these relations exist following SOX, the potential economic magnitude of the effect is small.     

新会计准则下的衍生金融工具及其审计风险

金融衍生工具会计是现代财务会计领域一大难题,而对于衍生金融工具的审计更是审计领域的一大难题。随着衍生金融会计准则的推行,从而使衍生金融工具审计增加了更多的风险。因此,注册会计师应不断提高审素质,完善审计技术、改革审计模式,详细了解被审计单位的相关情况,并加强时被审计单位内部控制及执行情况的调查,以有效地降低审计风险。     

Production Efficiency and the Pricing of Audit Services*

In this paper, we examine the relative efficiency of audit production by one of the then Big 6 public accounting firms for a sample of 247 geographically dispersed audits of U.S. companies performed in 1989. To test the relative efficiency of audit production, we use both stochastic frontier estimation (SFE) and data envelopment analysis (DEA). A feature of our research is that we also test whether any apparent inefficiencies in production, identified using SFE and DEA, are correlated with audit pricing. That is, do apparent inefficiencies cause the public accounting firm to reduce its unit price (billing rate) per hour of labor utilized on an engagement? With respect to results, we do not find any evidence of relative (within‐sample) inefficiencies in the use of partner, manager, senior, or staff labor hours using SFE. This suggests that the SFE model may not be sufficiently powerful to detect inefficiencies, even with our reasonably large sample size. However, we do find apparent inefficiencies using the DEA model. Audits range from about 74 percent to 100 percent relative efficiency in production, while the average audit is produced at about an 88 percent efficiency level, relative to the most efficient audits in the sample. Moreover, the inefficiencies identified using DEA are correlated with the firm's realization rate. That is, average billing rates per hour fall as the amount of inefficiency increases. Our results suggest that there are moderate inefficiencies in the production of many of the subject public accounting firm's audits, and that such inefficiencies are economically costly to the firm.     

Employee Movements from Audit Firms to Audit Clients

Regulators have expressed concerns about the “revolving door” between auditors and clients, whereby audit employees move directly from audit firms to audit clients (i.e., “direct alumni hires”). Regulators are concerned that these direct hires could compromise audit quality, partly because these employees could have previously audited their hiring company's financial statements. In contrast, we examine accounting and finance executives who move indirectly from audit firms to audit clients and who could not have previously audited the hiring company's financial statements (i.e., “indirect alumni hires”). We show that indirect hires occur more often than the direct hires that have concerned regulators. We predict and find that both direct and indirect alumni hires are associated with lower rates of executive turnover and audit firm turnover. However, there is no evidence that the reduced rates of executive turnover are explained by managerial entrenchment or that these hires are associated with lower audit quality. Overall, our findings suggest that direct and indirect employee movements from audit firms to audit clients are beneficial to executives, audit clients, and audit firms because they reduce the incidence of costly turnover.     

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.     

Mind the Gap: Why Do Experts Have Differences of Opinion Regarding the Sufficiency of Audit Evidence Supporting Complex Fair Value Measurements?

Reported deficiencies continue to persist in audits of fair value measurements and other complex accounting estimates (hereafter, “FVMs”), despite improvements in auditor performance observed by regulators. The persistence of reported deficiencies in audits of FVMs suggests that factors underlying this trend may be more complicated and multidimensional than previously suggested by regulators and academic research, which has focused largely on auditors' unsatisfactory performance as the principal source of reported deficiencies. Drawing from the judgment and decision‐making expertise literature, we gather field‐based data from audit experts to identify additional factors that are likely to be contributing to differences of opinion between audit and inspection experts and the persistence of reported deficiencies in audits of FVMs. We find evidence that audit experts interpret standards and evaluate audit evidence differently than inspectors, and thus perceive there to be a gap between what auditors and inspectors regard as sufficient appropriate audit evidence to support audits of FVMs (hereafter, “FVM gap”). Moreover, results highlight several areas in audits of FVMs where differences of opinion exist between auditor and inspector experts regarding what constitutes a reported deficiency. Within the contexts we examine, our results identify additional factors, beyond deficient auditor performance, that may contribute to the FVM gap. We also report audit partners' recommendations for ways to reduce the FVM gap and suggest avenues for future research. Gaining a more complete understanding of sources contributing to reported deficiencies will help regulators, standard setters, audit firms, and academics to identify ways to reduce the FVM gap and reported deficiencies in audits of FVMs.     

审计非标意见原因及其交叉分析

本文对2004—2007年度上市公司财务报表的审计非标意见进行了较为细致的整理,对其原因进行了交叉分析,分别从非标意见发布者（会计师事务所）、非标意见具体内容以及非标意见上市公司类型等方面分析了非标审计意见分布,对解决注册会计师审计中存在的问题、提高审计质量、防范审计风险提供参考都具有重要意义,此外也将有助于报表使用者对审计报告中非标意见的解读。     

Expertise Rents from Insider Trading for Financial Experts on Audit Committees

We document the existence of expertise rents by finding that financial experts on audit committees obtain higher abnormal returns from insider purchases than do non‐financial experts on audit committees. We further investigate whether information processing skills work alone or jointly with an information advantage to generate expertise rents. While financial experts on audit committees outperform financial experts on other committees, financial experts on compensation, executive, nominating, and governance committees do not outperform non‐financial experts on these committees. These findings suggest that expertise rents are domain‐specific and can be obtained only when directors have both access to private information and information processing skills. In additional testing, we find that expertise rents for financial experts on audit committees are primarily driven by non‐accounting financial experts, whose finance or supervisory experience could make them better than accounting financial experts in understanding market conditions and assessing firm risk.     

Discretionary Accounting Accruals,Managers' Incentives,and Audit Fees*

This paper examines the linkages between discretionary accruals (DAs), managerial share ownership, management compensation, and audit fees. It draws on the theory that managers of firms with high management ownership are likely to use DAs to communicate value‐relevant information, while managers of firms with high accounting‐based compensation are likely to use DAs opportunistically to manage earnings to improve their compensation. OLS regression results of 648 Australian firms show that (1) there is a positive association between DAs and audit fees; (2) managerial ownership negatively affects the positive relationship between DAs and audit fees; and (3) this negative impact is further found to be weaker for firms with high accounting‐based management compensation.     

Is Audit Committee Equity Compensation Related to Audit Fees?*

Section 301 of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) implicitly assumes that audit committees can independently determine audit fees. Critics of section 301 have questioned this assumption in particular, and the efficacy of section 301 more generally. In response, the SEC issued a concept release in 2015 calling for public disclosure of the process that audit committees follow for determining auditor compensation. Motivated by these calls and the widespread use of stocks and options to compensate firms' independent directors, we examine the relation between equity compensation granted to audit committee members and audit fees. Using a sample of 3,685 firm‐year observations during 2007–2015, we find a negative relation between audit committee equity compensation and audit fees, consistent with larger equity pay inducing audit committee members to compromise independence by paying lower audit fees. These findings are robust to controlling for endogeneity, firm size, alternative measures of equity compensation, alternative samples, and an alternative treatment of extreme values. We further show that larger equity compensation is associated with lower earnings quality. We also find that the negative effect of equity compensation on audit fees is stronger when city‐level audit market competition is high. However, this negative relation disappears when (i) firms face high litigation risk, (ii) auditors have stronger bargaining power, (iii) the audit committee includes a high proportion of accounting experts, and (iv) auditors are industry experts. Our results are relevant for regulators and investors.     

CPA职业声誉损害经济后果性研究——来自银广夏事件的初步发现和启示

独立审计是提高会计信息可信性和缓解委托代理成本的有效机制，其作用的发挥取决于审计质量，而职业声誉是市场衡量审计质量的便捷标准，CPA职业声誉的损害是否会削弱社会公众对审计质量的评价，进而影响市场对公司价值的判断？本文以银广夏事件作为研究切入点，发现银广夏造假公开日和中注协宣布将对中天勤进行严肃查处日其审计的其他上市公司异常报酬率显著为负，异常交易量显著不等于0。职业声誉损害的负面作用在中国得到了验证。