审计师变更、审计收费与审计委员会效率

本文首先研究了审计委员会与外部审计师变更之间的关系,发现设立审计委员会的公司,外部审计师发生变更的可能性显著降低。表明审计委员会能有效缓解管理层与外部审计师之间就如何运用公认会计原则产生的分歧,并在相互的冲突中向外部审计师提供支持。本文还研究了外部审计师变更时,设立审计委员会与年报审计收费变化之间的关系。无论从变化方向和变化数量的角度,公司设立审计委员会都与审计收费变化显著负相关。这说明外部审计师显著降低了对已设立审计委员会公司的审计收费。这为审计委员会能够改善内部控制环境,降低外部审计的控制风险提供了间接证据。     

审计师轮换制度下的审计成本分析

审计师轮换制度是目前的热门话题,理论上实施该制度有利于提高审计质量和有助于实现审计实质上的独立,但审计成本也会随之大幅增加,而成本的增加将可能抵销制度所带来的收益。本文通过例证分析了审计师轮换制度下各项审计成本的变化情况,结论是现阶段我国不宜实行审计师轮换制度。     

证券市场自愿性会计师事务所变更行为特征分析——基于2003～2005年沪深A股上市公司审计数据

本文以自愿性会计师事务所变更为研究对象,通过对2003——2005年沪、深两市A股上市公司变更组样本与非变更组样本的数据分析,结果发现:变更组样本审计意见的缓和率高于非变更组样本;后任会计师事务所规模明显变小的比例大于明显变大的比例。这说明追求高质量审计并不是上市公司变更会计师事务所的主要动机,加强对会计师事务变更行为的监管仍将是我国证券监管部门的重要工作内容。     

论事务所规模化与审计质量保证

本文从会计师事务所规模和审计质量相关性的两个主要理论出发,分析了声誉机制和法律风险机制的运行效率,并指出当前我国的会计师事务所只有在“法律风险-声誉积累-规模化”的共生互动中才能真正走上做大做强的发展之路.     

审计师与管理者博弈下的审计独立性与审计质量——纵横国际的例证分析

审计独立性与审计质量始终是审计研究领域的核心问题。本文以纵横国际为例,采用博弈论的方法,从审计师与公司管理者的较量角度审视审计独立性与审计质量的关系。我们认为:制度对审计独立性和审计质量的影响并不是直接的,而是通过影响审计师在与客户管理当局的博弈中的决策行为而对审计独立性发挥作用,然后带来审计质量的变化。     

审计师行为选择与其独立性偏好关系分析

现行关于审计师行为实证研究中,大都基于审计意见类型推断审计师独立性,没有对审计意见类型为什么能代表审计师独立性进行分析和讨论,本文采用偏好、选择与效用经济学基础理论来进行分析和证明。通过逻辑分析、模型构建和推导发现,对审计意见类型的选择结构能够推断审计师对独立性的偏好关系,这种关系是基于审计师效用最大化做出的。     

The effect of non-audit services on client risk, acceptance and staffing decisions

The Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 prohibited auditing firms from providing certain non-audit services to audit clients and left open the possibility that other currently non-prohibited services could also be banned. This prohibition hinges, in part, on regulatory concerns that auditors were willing to accept prospective higher risk clients in order to obtain more profitable non-audit service engagements. Accounting firms rejected this claim. Given the prospect that more non-audit services could be prohibited, we revisit this debate by examining these competing claims in an experiment in which we manipulate risk and the potential to sell non-audit services and then observe the impact of these variables on auditors’ client acceptance and subsequent staffing decisions. Specifically, audit partners received client information and were asked to make an acceptance decision and propose a staffing plan for a potential engagement. We find that a higher (lower) level of risk decreased (increased) the likelihood of acceptance and this relation did not vary with the potential to provide non-audit services. These results do not support the regulators’ claims but are consistent with the firms’ claims. Further, we found that more experienced auditors were assigned to the prospective client whose management had lower integrity. This staffing plan is consistent with a risk adaptation strategy for the client with lower integrity. The prohibition of certain non-audit services has been justified on the grounds that auditors might engage in systematic opportunistic behavior. However, our results do not find such behavior which should inform the current PCAOB deliberation over whether additional services should be banned. Alternatively, different justification must be found for the prohibitions.     

Auditor specialization, perceived audit quality, and audit fees in the local government audit market

Prior governmental research implies a positive relation between auditor specialization and audit quality, but the effect of specialization on audit fees is mixed. However, no single governmental study investigates the effect of auditor specialization on both audit quality and audit fees. Also, prior studies focus on either large- or small audit firms and often employ indirect proxies for audit quality. We study the effects of auditor specialization on perceived audit quality and audit fees. Our data represent both Big 5 and smaller audit firms and include three market-based measures of specialization. We survey 241 Florida local government finance directors and find that specialization is positively associated with perceived audit quality but not with audit fees. We also find that Big 5 auditors, often used as a proxy for higher audit quality in prior research, are not uniformly associated with increased perceived audit quality but consistently charge higher audit fees. Our results confirm a relation between measures of audit firm specialization and audit quality and raise questions regarding audit firm size and audit quality in the municipal sector. Our findings suggest that engaging specialized auditors may be good policy for many local governments.     

代理成本与审计师选择行为研究综述

根据代理理论,独立审计的产生源自于降低代理成本的需求.代理冲突的程度将导致不同的审计质量需求,因此产生对异质审计师的需求.西方大量关于审计师选择和审计师变更的经验研究证实了这一点.但是,这一结论建立在有效的价格保护机制前提之下,对于市场发展和公司代理关系均与英美有较大差异的转型经济(包括我国)未必成立.     

Auditor Reputation,Auditor Independence,and the Stock‐Market Impact of Andersen's Indictment on Its Client Firms*

In this paper, we study a broad sample of Arthur Andersen clients and investigate whether the decline in Andersen's reputation, due to its criminal indictment on March 14, 2002, adversely affected the stock market's perception of its audit quality. Because these reputa‐tional concerns are more of an issue if an auditor's independence is impaired, we investigate the relationship between the abnormal market returns for Andersen clients around the time of the indictment announcement and several fee‐based measures of auditor independence. Our results suggest that when news about Andersen's indictment was released, the market reacted negatively to Andersen clients. More importantly, we find that the indictment period abnormal return is significantly more negative when the market perceived the auditor's independence to be threatened. We also examine the abnormal returns when firms announced the dismissal of Andersen as an auditor. Consistent with the audit quality explanation, we document that when firms quickly dismissed Andersen, the announcement returns are significantly higher when firms switched to a Big 4 auditor than when they either switched to non‐Big 4 auditors or did not announce the identity of the replacement auditor. Our empirical results support the notion that auditor reputation and independence have a material impact on perceived audit quality and the credibility of audited financial statements, and that the market prices this.