卖空机制与审计收费——基于双重差分模型的实证检验北大核心

我国引进融资融券制度是完善证券市场的重要举措。本文采用DID双重差分模型以及配对样本,考察了卖空机制对审计收费的影响。研究发现,卖空机制的引入使得融券标的企业的审计收费有所提高;分析师跟踪人数越多,融券标的企业的审计收费提高程度会越弱;当股权结构适度集中时,这种"提价效应"会消失。此外,本文还考察了卖空机制对异常审计收费的影响。     

独立审计、公司外部治理与真实经营业绩——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

独立审计是公司治理的重要外部机制,但考察独立审计治理功能影响公司真实经营业绩的文献还较少。从减少信息不对称、提升治理效率与决策能力角度,提出了一个独立审计的公司外部治理功能影响公司真实经营业绩的理论框架。选取事务所规模、审计收费和审计意见作为审计质量的替代变量,以我国2007年-2009年上市公司为样本,实证研究发现事务所规模及审计收费均与公司真实经营业绩正相关;审计意见对公司滞后一年的真实经营业绩没有影响,这可能与我国监管及诉讼制度不完善导致＂非标＂意见未给公司及其内部人带来显著成本有关。     

上市公司审计收费影响因素的实证研究

影响审计收费的因素研究一直是审计研究中的重点之一。国外学者已经证实的影响审计收费的因素有:被审计单位的规模,被审计单位业务的复杂性等,而国内对这方面的研究结论并没有达成一致性,特别是在公司治理因素对审计费用的影响方面,一直是研究的空白。本文以上交所房地产公司为样本,着重研究影响上市公司审计收费的因素,主要关注上市公司的规模、审计单位的规模、是否被ST、上市公司独立董事的比例、股权集中度这些指标对审计收费的影响,最后得出的结论是,上市公司的规模以及审计单位的规模两个因素显著,而代表审计风险的ST因素,以及上市公司的公司治理因素并不显著。     

审计风险的价格补偿:基于公司内部管理与外部监管视角

基于风险基础观,从企业的内部管理、外部监管两个层面,研究审计风险与审计收费的关系。对于内部管理中存在的风险采用了综合绩效风险、内部治理风险来衡量,外部监管选取了公司违规处理指标,研究发现:公司综合绩效风险、董事长与总经理两职合一与审计收费显著正相关,第一大股东持股比例与审计收费呈U型关系,而前十大股东关联度、独立董事比例、监管风险与审计收费没有显著关系。说明,会计师事务所在确定审计收费时给予公司内部风险更多的关注,审计风险在审计收费中得到了一定程度的补偿。     

公司治理、政治关联与审计收费——来自我国A股化工行业上市公司2011-2013年的经验证据北大核心CSSCI

本文选用我国A股化工行业上市公司2011-2013年的数据为研究样本,参考借鉴Simunic的审计收费模型,运用多元线性回归的分析方法,实证检验公司治理、政治关联对审计收费的影响。研究结果表明,审计收费与上市公司股权集中度、政治关联存在显著的负相关关系;与独立董事规模、董事会勤勉、公司规模、会计事务所规模存在显著的正相关关系。这对促进化工行业上市公司完善公司治理结构,完善我国审计收费制度具有重要的参考借鉴意义。     

基于公司治理结构的审计收费研究

公司治理是国内外管理、经济、法律等学术界、实务界共同关注、研究的一个世界性课题。公司治理与审计密不可分,两者均为委托人与代理人的共同需求,本质都是为了使委托人和代理人双方的利益最大化。我国审计市场中审计收费存在诸多问题,比如审计收费披露不规范、审计收费标准不统一及"低价揽客"等情况比较严重。公司治理结构不够完善,比如"一股独大",监事会不能充分发挥其法定职能等。借鉴西方国家的经验,在公司内部建立审计委员会制度,同时,大力推进国有股权分置改革,优化公司治理结构,促进审计收费规范化。     

内部控制与审计定价研究——基于中国上市公司的经验证据

企业的内部控制质量直接影响着注册会计师的审计投入和审计风险,进而影响到其审计定价水平。本文以我国2008—2009年深沪两市1395家上市公司作为研究样本,实证考察了企业内部控制质量与注册会计师审计定价之间的关系。研究结果表明:注册会计师的审计收费与企业的内部控制质量之间存在着不显著的负相关性。通过在模型中引入相关公司治理变量,本文还发现合理的公司治理机制可以提高企业内部控制的整体质量,从而显著地降低注册会计师的审计收费水平。本文的启示意义在于:完善企业的内部控制制度有助于注册会计师开展风险导向审计,从而降低审计风险和审计成本,提高审计质量。     

风险基础观下的审计收费补偿研究

基于风险基础观,从企业的内部管理、外部监管两个层面,研究重大错报风险与审计收费的关系。对于内部管理中存在的风险采用了综合绩效风险、内部治理风险来衡量,外部监管选取了公司违规处理指标,研究发现:公司综合绩效风险、董事长与总经理两职合一与审计收费显著正相关,第一大股东持股比例与审计收费呈U型关系,而前十大股东关联度、独立董事比例、监管风险与审计收费没有显著关系。说明,会计师事务所在确定审计收费时给予公司内部风险更多的关注,重大错报风险在审计收费中得到了一定程度的补偿。     

放松卖空管制与大股东股权质押

本文以中国资本市场2010年开始实施的融资融券制度作为切入点,研究放松卖空管制对大股东股权质押融资行为的影响。一方面,放松卖空管制能够提高股票的定价效率,减少股票的错误定价,使得股票估值水平相对较低,股权质押融资成本增加;另一方面,股权质押可能向市场传递出一种"坏消息",引发卖空行为,导致股东的利益受损。两方面共同作用从而降低了股东进行股权质押融资的意愿和规模。进一步研究发现,上述关系在民营上市公司中更为显著。本文实证研究结果表明,卖空机制可以作为一种来自外部的治理机制规制公司的融资行为。     

金融类上市公司审计收费影响因素研究

本文基于2001-2009年审计收费数据,比较了金融类上市公司审计费用的变化情况,实证检验了金融类上市公司的审计收费决定因素。结果显示,公司资产规模、双重审计是审计收费最重要的决定因素。进一步,我们发现在07年双重审计取消以后,金融类公司审计收费最重要的影响因素为公司资产规模。另外,＂四大＂、地区经济收入水平、审计任期也与审计收费显著相关。从行业分类回归来看,金融业内不同行业审计收费的决定因素存在一定的差异。     

Implications of Short Selling for Corporate Finance

Corporate managers often view short sellers as market manipulators whose actions drive their company's stock price below intrinsic value. But recent academic research suggests that some short sellers are effective in processing publicly available information and that their short selling may provide useful information to market participants. This article summarizes the authors’ own published research, which provides evidence of informed short selling by linking it to changes in corporate fundamentals. More specifically, the authors’ findings indicate that increases in short interest are reliable indicators of an economically (as well as statistically) significant decline in a company's operating performance over the following three years. And when examining changes in short interest around announcements of seasoned equity offerings, the authors also find a negative relation between an increase in short interest and future operating performance. In addition, they find that the greater the increase in short interest in the period leading up to the SEO announcement, the more negative is the stock‐price response to the announcement itself. The authors’ findings suggest that corporate managers can benefit from monitoring the short‐selling activity in their company's stock. Short‐selling data can be used to reassess corporate strategy or rethink major corporate decisions that have been announced but not carried out, and take preemptive actions to forestall impending future declines in performance and so preserve value.     

放松卖空管制能够抑制并购商誉泡沫吗？

本文以我国放松卖空管制作为切入点,系统检验了其对并购商誉泡沫的影响。研究发现,放松卖空管制之后,超额商誉显著下降,同时商誉资产也显著下降,且该效应在民营控股公司中更显著;机制检验发现,卖空通过吸引更多分析师跟踪、增加对管理者的激励来抑制商誉泡沫;进一步研究发现,在市场化水平较高、行业竞争度较低的情形下,卖空机制对商誉泡沫的抑制作用更强。本文的研究结论丰富了卖空和并购商誉领域的文献,并为以市场导向原则化解并购商誉泡沫提供了新思路和新范式。     

The effect of general counsel prominence on the pricing of audit services

We investigate the effect of corporate general counsel (GC) ascension to the senior management team on the pricing of audit services. Prior research suggests that the GC position may have a significant influence in setting the tone at the top by promoting corporate integrity, ethics, and serving as a governance and monitoring mechanism, but also recognizes that prominent GCs may face ethical dilemmas, causing them to disregard professional responsibilities to curry the favor of the CEO and other executives. Using audit fees to proxy for audit engagement risk, we find a negative association between GC ascension to top management and audit fees. We investigate the mechanisms behind this relation and find GC ascension is associated with a reduction in both default risk and financial misstatement risk, which supports auditors’ perceived reduction in client business risk and audit risk, respectively.     

卖空与创新:A股公司融券试点的证据

本文依托中国A股市场2010年开始实施的融券试点,在通过多时点双重差分和倾向得分匹配等计量方法控制内生性的基础上,实证检验了卖空对上市公司创新行为的促进作用.结果 表明:(1)加入融券标的后,卖空公司的创新数量和创新质量都有显著提高;(2)对于金融市场欠发达、治理水平较差的公司,这种作用更明显;(3)在使用融券余额作为卖空势力的测度并用ETF基金持股比例作为工具变量进一步控制内生性以后,以上结论仍然成立.卖空有助于降低创新企业的信息不对称性和加强对经理人的薪酬激励,进而促进了企业的创新.因此,取消卖空限制将有助于中国企业的创新和资本市场的健康稳定发展.     

Corporate governance and audit fees: Evidence from companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange

This study uses data from companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange to investigate the relationship between corporate governance and audit fees. Full sample results reveal a significant negative relationship between corporate governance and audit fees, and subsample results further show that corporate governance’s influence on audit fees is affected by corporate growth. The negative relationship between corporate governance and audit fees is economically and statistically significant in sample companies that grew moderately during the sample period, and mixed or insignificant in companies that experienced overly fast or negative growth.     

Effect of regulatory oversight on the association between internal governance characteristics and audit fees

We examine the relationship between internal governance, external audit monitoring and regulatory oversight for a sample comprising industrial companies and financial/utility companies subject to additional industry‐specific regulation. Our results indicate that the association between audit fees and board/audit committee independence and size are weaker for regulated companies. These observations are consistent with the notion that regulatory oversight partially substitutes the external audit as a monitoring mechanism. However, boards/audit committees with more multiple directorships demand a more extensive audit in the presence of regulatory oversight to protect their reputation capital. Our study enhances our understanding of the complex relationships among the major corporate governance elements.     

The empirical relationship between ownership characteristics and audit fees

The present study examines the empirical relationship between ownership characteristics and audit fees. The basic premise is that the level of ownership sophistication and the extent to which ownership is large and substantial impact the effectiveness of stockholder monitoring on corporate affairs including the financial reporting process. Furthermore, high managerial ownership firms may experience a decline in agency problems in financial reporting due to a decrease in managerial propensity to misreport financial results. By employing a cross-sectional least squares regression analysis for a sample of 358 New York Stock Exchange-listed firms audited by the Big Five auditors, we find evidence of a significantly positive relationship between diffused institutional stock ownership (i.e., having less than 5% individual shareholding) and audit fees, and a significantly negative relationship between institutional blockholder ownership (i.e., having 5% or more individual shareholding) and audit fees. Finally, we document that managerial stock ownership is negatively associated with audit fees. We do not, however, find evidence of any relationship between noninstitutional blockholder ownership (with at least 5% individual stock ownership) and audit fees. The study's main results hold in various specification tests including when the effects of board-related and audit committee variables are factored in the analysis. Based on the observed relationship between the ownership variables and audit fees, we suggest that the ownership characteristics of a firm as a part of its governance mechanism constitute an important determinant of audit fees.

Corporate lobbying: Resource-seeking or rent-seeking? Evidence from audit fees

Theory and prior research suggest that corporate lobbying is a primary means that corporations use to influence government policies either for improving firm performance (i.e., strategic decisions) or for rent-seeking activities (i.e., agency costs) but the evidence between lobbying activities and auditor assessments of audit risk remains unclear. Our results show that lobbying firms are associated with higher audit risks and fees, consistent with the idea that lobbying is related to rent-seeking and higher agency costs. In cross-sectional analyses, we find that the positive association between lobbying and audit fees is weaker for firms with strong corporate governance. Further analysis shows that firm financial returns or low earnings quality mediate the relationship between lobbying and audit fees. The results suggest that practitioners, users of financial statements and regulators could benefit by recognizing that lobbying activities could signal managerial opportunistic behavior.     

Are Audit Committees Red Herrings?

The common expectation of committees established in the wake of the corporate debacles during 1980s in the English-speaking world is that the audit committee device will raise the standards of corporate accountability and governance by improving the quality of financial reporting. That expectation is based on the prevalent belief that by strengthening the independence of auditors and non-executive directors audit committee members will monitor the financial reporting process in an independent manner. Unless accounting practices are reformed so that financial statements can be authenticated by recourse to reliable commercial evidence, audit committees are red herrings. Such reforms are essential if audit committee members are to keep under vigilant appraisal matters pertaining to the financial governance of, and reporting by, firms: the raison d'être of their appointment.