Debt Covenant Restriction,Financial Misreporting,and Auditor Monitoring*

Theory suggests that financial report-based debt covenants engender incentives for the manager to relax covenant constraints through accounting choices in order to avoid costly covenant violations. Prior studies directly testing this hypothesis in the context of financial misreporting fail to find consistent evidence. Using a more refined measure of debt covenant restriction, we find that debt covenant restriction is positively associated with the probability of financial statement misstatements. This positive association is driven by performance covenants rather than capital covenants and is more consistent with the manager striving to avoid a “false-positive” violation than to delay the violation. Our results also imply that managers resort to both income-increasing and non–income-increasing misreporting to relieve covenant constraints and rely more on the latter when faced with greater earnings management constraints. Additionally, the auditor charges higher audit fees to firms with more binding covenants even outside the violation state, and audit fees increase with constraints relative to both performance and capital covenants, reflecting greater financial reporting risk and bankruptcy risk, respectively. Within capital covenants, we find some evidence of even higher audit fees for tighter intangible-inclusive versus intangible-exclusive capital covenants. Lastly, our evidence suggests that the positive association between covenant constraints and misreporting is attenuated when the auditor has more experience with debt covenants, has greater bargaining power over the client, or faces greater litigation risk.     

做好医院内部审计工作的几点思考

目前,随着我国社会经济的高速发展,医疗产业发展与经营形式的不断变化,医疗资源紧缺与群众就医需求的矛盾凸显,对医疗机构的内控管理提出了更高的要求。完善内部审计机制,优化内控管理的整体质量,不仅是新时期医院实现自我监督的改革路径,同时也是提升医疗资源配置形式,协调不同工作部门责任关系的关键内容。在此基础上,建立现代化内部审计机制,结合医院新时期发展特征,不断调整内控机制中不适应发展需求的部分,已经成为当前阶段医疗机构满足内部发展需求,创新财务管理模式的首要任务。     

新形势下医院内审范围及内容的思考

本文主要介绍了新形势下医院内审的范围及内容,并针对审计工作范围及内容扩大这一情况,提出了相应的解决对策。     

风险导向内部审计应用研究

在经济高速发展的大环境下,审计作为提升企业竞争力的一项措施受到了广泛重视。提及审计,大多数人都仅仅会想到其中的财务审计这一块,而在企业实际运营工作中,如何做好风险评估仍然存在很多欠缺之处,所以推动风险导向的内部审计发展,使其成为企业管理的一种重要手段,对于企业自身的发展具有重大意义,也是一个任重而道远的过程。     

On the Relationship between Audit Tenure and Fees Paid to the Audit Firm and Audit Quality

Abstract

We investigate the impact of audit firm tenure, partner tenure, audit fees, fees for non-audit services and total fees on audit quality, as measured by discretionary accruals. Our sample consists of Spanish non-financial public companies for the years between 2006 and 2013. Results indicate that audit quality increases with audit firm tenure but decreases with partner tenure. Moreover, the level of fees paid to the audit firm seems to have a negative impact on audit quality, which is mainly driven by fees for audit services. In this regard, we do not observe any significant relationship between fees for non-audit services and audit quality. Our results also show that the negative relationship between either long partner tenures or high fees and audit quality does not occur when the tenure with the audit firm is long. Therefore, long audit firm tenures do not only seem to involve higher audit quality ‘per se’, but also moderate the negative effects of partner tenure and audit fees on audit quality. The results of this study, which are robust to several sensitivity checks, may be relevant for the current debate on auditor rotation and the joint provision of audit and non-audit services.     

审计质量、产权性质对上市公司投资效率的影响研究

审计质量作为第三方会计师事务所为公司提供的服务,可以独立于公司之外对上市公司投资活动进行监督。根据产权理论,产权性质不同的经济组织从事的经济活动不同,审计质量对不同产权性质的上市公司投资效率的影响也不相同。本文以2014—2018年沪深两市上市公司作为样本,实证检验了审计质量、产权性质与公司投资效率间的关系。研究发现,审计质量与上市公司投资过度显著负相关,与投资不足负相关但作用并不明显;在国有上市公司中审计质量对投资过度行为的抑制作用更明显,在非国有上市公司中审计质量可以在一定程度上防止投资不足行为的发生但作用并不显著。研究结论有利于启示各不同产权性质公司的利益相关方,客观认识审计师的作用功能及其局限性,有针对性、有效率地利用好审计服务,改善公司投资效率。     

浅议CPA审计行业专门化问题

随着我国市场经济体制改革的不断完善,CPA审计行业所面临的社会环境也因此而产生了重大的变化。伴随着社会对审计人员的严格要求,审计人员的素质也在不断提高。当然,这对CPA这个行业无疑也产生了深深的影响,同时也对行业的专门化也起到了潜移默化的推动作用。因此在本文中,将会立足于注册会计师审计实务,通过具体分析行业专门化的竞争优势和目前的发展趋势,讨论审计行业专门化可能带来的经济后果,并且与多个上市公司的案例相结合,运用案例分析法、经验总结法、描述分析法等方法合理透彻地剖析出目前CPA审计行业所存在的问题,以及对已经存在的问题作出具体解决方案。     

Auditors' Responses to Workload Imbalance and the Impact on Audit Quality*

Using detailed data for fieldwork hours and audit hours by rank from audit engagements in Korea, we examine whether audits conducted under workload imbalance, proxied by busy‐season audits, impair audit quality, and how auditors adjust staff assignments for busy‐season audits. We generally find that busy‐season audits are associated with lower audit quality, and that audit firms reduce the involvement of senior auditors during busy‐season audits. In addition, the greater the involvement of senior auditors and junior auditors, the lesser the deterioration in audit quality. Finally, although there is no increase in interim audits in response to workload imbalance during busy seasons, increasing interim audits can mitigate the negative impact of busy‐season audits on audit quality. Our results are relevant to auditors and regulators, who have expressed concerns about the adverse effects of workload imbalance on audit quality.     

强化责任意识提升审计执行力

本文结合工作实践,从提升科级干部履职能力,有效执行能力,务实创新三个角度分别阐述审计干部强化责任意识的重要意义及有效途径。     

Analysts' Cash Flow Forecasts,Audit Effort,and Audit Opinions on Internal Control

We examine the economic impact of analysts’ cash flow forecasts by looking at how external auditors respond to financial analysts’ issuance of cash flow forecasts. Using a differences‐in‐differences approach, we find that financial analysts’ initiation of cash flow forecasts leads to reduced auditor fees and audit report lags. Moreover, after cash flow forecast initiation, firms report fewer Section 404(b) internal control weakness disclosures. These findings suggest that cash flow forecasts constrain earnings manipulation and improve management accounting behavior, thereby reducing inherent and control risk and strengthening firms’ internal control over financial reporting.