审计失败中的审计责任认定与监管倾向:经验分析

监管者对审计责任的认定倾向是审计执业环境的重要构成。本文选取1999—2006年间中国证券市场发生的72例财务报表审计失败进行观测,发现:(1)在监管实践较早期间(1999—2002年间)的审计失败样本观测中,88.2%的审计师遭到处罚;而2003—2006年间的审计失败观测中仅有23.6%的审计师遭到处罚;(2)在控制了审计失败观测的公司受处罚严厉度、舞弊期跨度、舞弊期间审计意见类型以及审计师规模后,仍能检测到近年来审计责任认定的显著缓和趋势;(3)即使对于审计师受到处罚的审计失败观测,在1999—2002年间平均82.7%的虚假陈述事项需要由审计师承担审计责任,而在2003—2006年间仅有平均41.2%的虚假陈述事项须由审计师承担责任。综上,监管机构在近年来对会计师事务所或签字注册会计师的审计责任认定显著趋于缓和与稳健;审计执业环境的这种变化趋势亦可为未来监管和司法实践中的审计责任界定提供有益的借鉴。     

The role of audit evidence in a strategic audit

This study examines how audit risk (the probability of false acceptance) and its components change when the auditor obtains audit evidence in an acceptance sampling model. Inherent risk and audit risk increase with audit evidence if the auditee has a sufficiently strong incentive for committing fraud. Detection risk always increases when audit evidence is introduced. If the auditor has a sufficiently strong incentive for avoiding false rejection, audit risk also increases with audit evidence. The analysis indicates that requiring auditors to obtain information is not effective in preventing material misstatements in at least some instances.     

Scope of Auditors' Liability,Audit Quality,and Capital Investment

One of the fundamental issues in the discussion of auditors' liability is to whom auditors should be held liable for ordinary negligence under common law. Three judicial viewpoints prevail: the restrictive privity approach, the more liberal Restatement approach, and the most liberal foreseeability approach. To compare these three approaches from an efficiency perspective, this paper develops a model that features an owner-managed firm, an independent auditor, a continuum of unrelated lenders, and an impartial court. Double effort-incentive problems appear for the firm and the auditor. The firm has an additional incentive problem due to the sequential nature of its borrowing. This paper shows that the effort-incentive problem and the sequential borrowing problem of the firm render unambiguous improvements in audit effort/quality, capital investment, and social welfare as the judicial approach governing the scope of auditors' liability becomes more conservative.     

Audit fees around dismissals and resignations: Additional evidence

This paper offers new findings about how audit fees vary around auditor dismissals and resignations. For dismissals, we find evidence of lower than normal fees before and after an auditor change, consistent with the view that both incumbent and successor auditors adjust fees downward to retain the client. Our evidence also shows that incumbent and successor auditors charge unusually high fees before and after a resignation. We interpret the higher than normal incumbent fees as an indication that resignation companies reflect unusual levels of audit effort or risk, which the incumbent auditor captures as additional fees. Eventually, however, the additional fees are insufficient, inducing the incumbent to resign. A fee premium by the successor auditor after resignation also supports this view.     

Audit Effort and Stock Price Crash Risk

We examine how stock price crash risk is affected by audit effort, as measured by audit hours. Using a unique dataset of audit hours in China, we find that audit effort is negatively related to crash risk. The negative impact of audit effort on crash risk is more pronounced for listed firms that have higher inherent risks and weaker external monitoring of their information environment. Our findings are robust to various tests, including a two-stage regression analysis, controlling for listed firm-fixed effects and audit firm-fixed effects, and using alternative measures of crash risk. In addition to audit output measures, audit effort has an incremental influence on crash risk. The effects of audit effort on crash risk continue to hold after controlling for auditor industry expertise and auditor tenure.     

Legal systems and auditor independence

This paper examines whether an appropriate legal system, which is a combination of a legal regime and a damage apportionment rule, effectively enhances auditor independence. Economic and psychological hypotheses derived from a one-period game model in which the auditor may commit either a technical audit failure (resulting from the auditor’s inability to detect true output given a lack of audit effort) or an independence audit failure (resulting from the auditor’s intentional misreporting on false output) are tested. Three major findings are documented. First, auditor independence affects firm investment, which in turn affects audit effort. Under this strategic dependence, no single legal system can provoke audit effort, improve auditor independence, and encourage firm investment simultaneously. To enhance auditor independence and motivate investment, a legal system consisting of both a strict regime and a proportionate rule is preferred. Second, the strict regime induces more auditor independence than the negligence regime, while the proportionate rule induces higher audit effort than the joint-and-several rule. Finally, auditors’ moral reasoning and penalty for misreporting are both positively associated with their independence. In addition, the effect of moral reasoning on auditor independence diminishes as the level of penalty increases. These two results hold only when the legal systems that auditors face are considered.     

AUDITOR PREFERENCES FOR LIABILITY LIMITATION

Debate over statutorily limiting auditor civil liability has implicitly assumed auditors are homogeneous in their preferences for capping liability. This study examines the preferences of auditors for limiting auditor liability and investigates reasons for the preferences. The study uses an Australian setting in which there has been a persistent debate for a decade or more over regulatory intervention in this area. The study provides a background to the debate over this issue and addresses the effects of two factors suggested by the extant literature, namely auditor size and the business risk of an auditor's client portfolio. These factors are argued to affect the expected costs of litigation facing auditors and therefore their preferences on capping liability. Using the submissions by audit firms on an Australian Companies and Securities Law Review Committee Discussion Paper on limiting auditor liability, the study finds larger audit firms that have greater capacities to lobby and greater expected costs of litigation from unlimited liability than smaller firms, dominate the respondents on the Paper and tend to be more supportive of liability limitation than smaller audit firms. Within the array of possible methods of capping liability canvassed by the Discussion Paper, the study documents evidence of diversity in preferences among audit firms. Larger audit firm size is associated with a preference for a group of methods that provides such firms with opportunities to benefit from the capping at the expense of the smaller audit firms. The method most preferred by the larger audit firms is the multiple of fee with a prescribed minimum. Perhaps not surprisingly, this is also the preferred method of the professional accounting bodies in Australia. As to the effect of the riskiness of the client portfolio on preferences for methods of limiting liability, the study finds that higher business risk in an auditor's portfolio is associated with a preference for methods that give greater control over their liability exposure. The study has implications for the impact of regulation of capping liability on competition in the audit services market.     

Optimism and auditor liability

There is strong evidence that individuals are optimistic in the sense that they underrate the probability of a negative event occurring. This paper provides a positive theoretical analysis of how auditor optimism affects their incentives to take care under two liability rules: strict liability and a negligence rule. Under strict liability, auditors are held liable when they cause damages to investors. Under a negligence rule, auditors are held liable when they cause damages and in addition, act negligently, that is, fail to meet the standard of due care specified in legal and professional rules. I find the following results. (1) If due care is sufficiently close to the efficient level, a negligence rule distorts auditors’ incentives less than strict liability. Under strict liability, optimism makes the auditor overestimate the chances of finding material mistakes and thus induces suboptimal care. (2) If due care is too strict, the auditor will not exert due care but the same level of suboptimal care under either liability rule. (3) With increasing optimism and in the absence of punitive damages, strict liability becomes less preferable to a precise negligence rule. This statement also holds for vaguely defined standards of due care if due care is sufficiently strict or if auditor optimism is sufficiently high. (4) Punitive damages counteract suboptimal incentives generated by auditor optimism, especially under strict liability.     

An Analysis of Potential Legal Liability Incurred Through Audit Expert Systems

The introduction of expert systems technology into the audit environment has opened a new avenue of auditor legal liability. This paper examines the potential impact expert systems will have on auditor liability. The presentation of this new avenue of auditors' legal liability explores both the potential for litigation under failure of auditor/expert system collaboration to yield prudent decisions and the failure to use an available expert system. The risks evolving from failure to use an available expert system include the possibility that the system could be used against the auditor in the courtroom. While case law will ultimately determine the bounds of this liability, this paper acquaints the reader with the important legal issues involved and the varied outcomes that could emerge. It should also be noted that while the specific example presented in this paper relates to the audit profession, the legal concepts are of equivalent concern to other professions enduring broad implementation of expert systems.     

An empirical investigation of the impact of audit and auditor characteristics on auditor performance

We use a unique and confidential database of 15,392 tax audits performed by the Croatian Tax Administration during the 2002–2006 period to examine the impact of task complexity, auditor experience, and auditor effort on audit performance. We provide external validation to prior experimental and analytical research showing that task complexity decreases while auditor experience and effort increase audit performance. We also extend this literature by examining the roles of task complexity and experience in moderating the impact of the effort on audit performance. We find that task complexity mitigates, while experience enhances the positive relationship between auditor effort and performance. However, we also find that auditor experience reinforces the positive effect of auditor effort on performance to a greater degree when complexity is high. Taken together, our findings provide new evidence on how audit and auditor characteristics impact audit performance, and new insight into how task complexity and auditor experience separately and jointly moderate the impact of auditor effort on performance.