网络媒体关注、审计质量与风险抑制——基于深圳主板A股上市公司的经验数据

以我国深圳证券交易所主板2011—2016年A股上市公司为样本，通过计算可操纵性应计利润衡量审计质量，使用上市公司违规数据衡量经营和交易违规风险与虚假披露风险，考察网络媒体关注的风险抑制作用。研究发现：网络媒体关注度与审计质量具有风险抑制效应，且网络媒体关注对风险的抑制作用更显著；进一步地，网络媒体关注可通过提高审计质量来抑制企业违规风险，审计质量在网络媒体关注与风险抑制之间发挥部分中介作用。     

Navigating Through the Spatial and Institutional Contradictions of Public Audit Oversight

Abstract

This study revisits the actions of the French audit regulator (H3C) and the French profession over the 2003–2013 period in response to the regulatory transformations that occurred both in the national and transnational space. Our analysis highlights how these actors have navigated through the spatial and institutional contradictions that characterize public audit oversight in order to manage variable and opposing interests from one space to another. In particular, we show how conflicting national and transnational conceptions of professionalism and commercialism have developed to support different regulatory agendas. Our analysis of the spatial dynamics of public audit oversight allows us to propose a much less confrontational representation of the relationships between public audit regulators and the audit profession. We maintain that more attention should be paid to the spatial variants of commercialism and professionalism to better understand the development of audit regulation.     

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。     

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.     

公司诉讼风险对审计决策的影响研究——基于异常审计费用和审计意见的证据

近年来上市公司诉讼风险不断攀升，对审计师决策行为的影响日益凸显。基于这一背景，系统探讨公司诉讼风险对审计决策的影响，分别研究公司诉讼风险对审计费用决策和审计意见决策的影响，并考察在诉讼风险冲击下审计费用决策和审计意见决策间的关系,同时结合我国制度背景，研究法律环境差异性对两种决策之间关系的影响。研究发现：公司诉讼风险越高，审计师收取正向异常审计费用的概率越高，出具非标准审计意见的可能性越大；审计费用策略和审计意见策略之间存在替代关系，即审计师倾向于在出具标准审计意见时收取正向异常审计费用作为风险补偿。进一步研究表明，在外部法律环境薄弱地区，审计费用决策和审计意见决策之间的替代关系更加显著。研究结论有助于合理解释和评价审计师的决策行为，对监管机构规范审计师的行为有着一定的启示意义。     

频繁并购重组与异常审计收费

以2012—2017年A股上市公司为样本，采用异常审计费用衡量审计师对上市公司频繁并购重组的风险溢价，探究企业频繁并购重组与审计师风险溢价收费的关系，研究发现企业频繁并购重组会导致审计师风险溢价提高。从商誉和盈余管理角度探究其路径机制发现，商誉和真实盈余管理是频繁并购重组导致更高审计师风险溢价两个重要中介变量，而应计盈余管理并没有发挥中介作用，即频繁并购重组企业操纵利润的手段倾向于采用真实盈余管理，而非应计盈余管理。     

内部控制、僵尸企业与审计特征

以2010—2017年深沪两市全部A股上市公司为研究样本，分析僵尸企业的审计特征并探讨内部控制对两者关系的调节效应。研究发现：相比于非僵尸企业，僵尸企业具有倾向于支付更低的审计费用、更有可能收到非标意见和更有可能选择非高质量审计师进行审计的特征，同时，僵尸企业内部控制环境更差。进一步研究发现，更高的内部控制质量使得僵尸企业更有可能收到标准无保留的审计意见，但非僵尸企业审计收费更高且更有可能选择高质量审计师。基于产权性质的进一步研究发现：（1）国有僵尸企业支付更低的审计费用，且中央国企支付的审计费用更低；（2）民营僵尸企业更有可能收到非标审计意见；（3）民营僵尸企业和地方国有僵尸企业更有可能选择非高质量审计师进行审计，且地方国有僵尸企业倾向性更强。从公司治理角度研究僵尸企业的审计特征，为识别僵尸企业提供了经验证据。     

政府审计、内部控制与企业创新

利用手工收集的政府审计公告数据，以2013—2017年的国有上市公司为样本，采用PSM+DID方法检验政府审计对国有上市公司创新活动的影响，并进一步根据内部控制质量和是否存在内部控制缺陷对样本进行分组检验两者之间的关系。研究结果表明：政府审计显著增加了国有上市公司的创新投入和创新产出；在内部控制质量高和不存在内部控制缺陷的样本企业中，政府审计对企业创新活动的促进作用更加显著。     

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.     

政府随机审计的动态博弈模型及政策启示

本文在一个三阶段动态博弈框架下，对政府随机审计过程中的政府审计机关与政府审计对象以及国家与政府审计对象之间的动态博弈特征进行了分析。分析结果显示：政府审计机关与政府审计对象之间存在一个纯策略纳什均衡，而国家和政府审计对象之间存在一个混合策略纳什均衡。政府审计对象接受国家实质性审计的概率是政府审计对象被政府机关审计发现违规或不作为后的惩罚倍数的单调递减函数，而政府审计对象的违规或不作为的概率分别是政府审计对象被政府机关审计发现违规或不作为后的惩罚倍数和政府审计对象的应尽义务或责任的单调递减函数，却是政府审计机关审计行为成本的单调递增函数。同时，结合研究结论和中国政府审计全覆盖的现实，给出了一些政策建议。