Debt contract strictness and auditor specialization

The conflicts of interest among managers, shareholders and creditors resulting in agency costs, can be mitigated by restricting managers’ adverse behavior, through financial covenants to better align the various stakeholder interests. Thus, debt contract strictness represents an important aspect of agency costs between creditors, shareholders, and management that is not always captured by interest rates. The contract setting provides a unique opportunity to investigate how creditors may rely on auditors to alleviate information uncertainty stemming from reliance on management's financial reporting and thus alleviate the creditor's potential loss of invested capital. After controlling for borrower risks, loan characteristics, and audit factors, we show that auditor industry specialization is significantly associated with a reduction in the strictness of debt contracts, consistent with creditors viewing certain industry expert auditors as effective monitors against financial reporting manipulation aimed at the avoidance of debt covenant triggers that protect creditors against potential loss. Further, we find that the association between loan strictness and auditor specialization is attenuated by stronger corporate governance systems, external monitors, and prior lender relationships.     

The effect of inspections,rotations and client preferences on staffing decisions

With increased regulatory focus on audits and concerns about whether audit regulation is achieving its stated aims, it is timely to investigate how regulator inspection of audit files and partner rotations may be affecting staffing decisions. This is an important issue, which affects all audits, as the calibre of staff allocated across engagements impacts the quality of audit work delivered. This study reports the results of an experiment where auditor participants allocate staff across two audits, where regulation anticipated (none, inspection, rotation) and a client request for the best staff (absent, present) are manipulated between‐subjects. We find that auditors allocate lower calibre staff when neither an inspection nor rotation is anticipated than when either is anticipated. When an inspection is anticipated, auditors allocate staff with more knowledge and compliance skills. When a rotation is anticipated, auditors allocate staff with more people skills. A client request for the best staff only has an effect when a partner is due to be rotated, where auditors allocate staff with more people skills in response to the client request. Our findings provide greater understanding of staffing decisions, which may affect audit quality if concerns around audit inspections and partner rotations are perceived by auditors as more important than the underlying risk or complexity of an engagement when allocating staff.     

Why do auditors fail? What might work? What won’t?†

Auditing failures and scandals have become commonplace. In response, reformers (including the Kingman Review in the U.K. and a recent report of the U.K.’s Competition and Market Authority) have proposed a variety of remedies, including prophylactic bans on auditors providing consulting services to their clients in the belief that this will minimize the conflicts of interest that produce auditing failures. Although useful, such reforms are already in place to a considerable degree and may have reached the point of diminishing returns. Moreover, this strategy does not address the deeper problem that clients (or their managements) may not want aggressive auditing, but rather prefer a deferential and perfunctory audit. If so, auditors will realize that they are marketing a ‘commodity’ service and cannot successfully compete based on their quality of services. Rationally, they would respond to such a market by seeking to adopt a cost-minimization strategy, competing by reducing the cost of their services and not investing in new technology or higher-priced personnel.

What could change this pattern? Gatekeepers, including auditors, serve investors, but are hired by corporate management. To induce gatekeepers to better serve investors, one needs to reduce the ‘agency costs’ surrounding this relationship by making gatekeepers more accountable to investors. This might be accomplished through litigation (as happens to some degree in the U.S.), but the U.K. and Europe have rules that discourage collective litigation. Thus, a more feasible approach would be to give investors greater ability to select and remove the auditor. This paper proposes a two part strategy to this end: (1) public ‘grading’ of the auditor by the audit regulator in an easily comparable fashion (and with a mandatory grading curve), and (2) enabling a minority of the shareholders (hypothetically, 10%) to propose a replacement auditor for a shareholder vote. It further argues that both activist shareholders and diversified shareholders might support such a strategy and undertake it under different circumstances. Absent such a focus on agency costs, however, reformers are likely only re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.     

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.     

Official rotation and corporate innovation: Evidence from the governor rotation

Rotation is a practice whereby officials are regularly moved between equally ranked positions. Focusing on governor rotation, this paper examines the effect of official rotation on corporate innovation in China. First, we find that official rotation significantly promotes corporate innovation, including enterprises’ innovation investment, quantity, and quality. Second, we find that the effect of official rotation on corporate innovation varies because of official and regional heterogeneity. Officials rotating from other provinces significantly stimulate corporate innovation, but officials rotating from the central government have an insignificant influence on corporate innovation. In addition, officials rotating to non-eastern regions significantly enhance corporate innovation, while officials rotating to eastern regions have a negligible impact on corporate innovation. We further examine the driving mechanism behind the effect of official rotation on corporate innovation and find that officials rotating from eastern regions to non-eastern regions can significantly promote corporate innovation, but officials rotating from non-eastern regions to eastern regions do not boost corporate innovation. These findings imply that the different effects of official rotation on corporate innovation are due to the official experience effect. We also find that official rotation can promote corporate innovation through reducing corporate charitable donations and increasing corporate innovation subsidies. In a supplementary analysis, we find that GDP-oriented performance appraisal pressure weakens the effect of official rotation on corporate innovation. The lower the pressure on officials regarding their performance, the more significant the effect of official rotation on corporate innovation. In addition, official rotation can significantly promote the development of the regional economy and improve the GDP growth rate via corporate innovation, which is a micro-level economic growth effect of official rotation. Overall, our findings further verify the economic effect of official rotation and extend our understanding of the influencing factors of corporate innovation from the perspective of the official governance system. Our findings also have clear policy implications for how the government can improve the official governance model to promote corporate innovation during the transition period of the national innovation system.     

How local leaders matter: Inter-provincial leadership transfers and land transactions in China

We study how local leaders matter for economic growth by examining the impacts of exogenous transfers of leaders across China’s provinces on land transactions in the primary market. We find that new provincial leaders attract investment in industrial land from the provinces of their previous positions. The leaders’ impacts are greater when their freedom to deploy their business connections in the land market is greater. More importantly, we find evidence of positive impacts of land transactions on economic growth, which should bode well for the careers of the local leaders, albeit there is some evidence of rent seeking among officials especially when they are too old for further promotion.     

审计师行业专长对审计重要性水平的影响——基于股权性质的调节作用研究

审计师行业专长意味着在特定领域较强的专业胜任能力,对于防范审计风险和提高审计质量都有显著影响。围绕审计师行业专长影响审计重要性水平这一主题，结合股权性质的调节作用，选取2016—2018年沪深两市A股上市公司作为研究对象，进行实证检验。结果表明，审计师行业专长对重要性水平有正向影响，如果被审计单位是国有控股上市公司，审计师行业专长与重要性水平的正相关关系更显著。这对审计机构人力资源配置、监管部门完善相关制度及监督工作具有参考价值。     

财务重述与审计师变更——来自中国上市公司的经验证据

本文以2003--2011年我国主板上市公司为样本，从市场声誉和信号传递的角度，对上市公司财务重述与审计师变更问题予以分析和解答。本文研究结果显示，相比于非财务重述公司而言，财务重述公司更可能变更审计师，且变更概率与重述的严重程度显著正相关，此外，就变更审计师的公司而言，财务重述公司比非重述公司更可能从小所变更为大所或在平级所之间进行变更。在此研究基础上，本文提出相应的政策建议。     

Firms’ performance following the initial resignation of independent directors: evidence from Taiwan

This study investigates the operating performance of firms listed on the Taiwan stock exchange following the initial resignation of independent directors. The results show that the firms’ operating performance following the resignation of these directors has not only deteriorated, but is also significantly below the industry average. In addition, firms with a relatively severe agency problem, including firms that have lower insider or institutional shareholdings, receive audit opinions other than unqualified opinions or change their auditors prior to the resignation of the independent directors, tend to perform more poorly following the resignation.     

基于多重交叉残差方法的空间目标旋转特性分析

针对传统的频谱分析和自相关函数反演周期时常出现虚假周期的问题，提出了多重交叉残差法处理空间旋转目标雷达散射截面(Radar Cross Section，RCS)的时间序列。以空间跟踪和监视系统(Space Tracking and Surveillance System,STSS)卫星为例，仿真了空间目标失稳旋转状态，对比了频谱分析、自相关函数和多重交叉残差3种方法的处理结果，发现当目标存在进动运动时多重交叉残差法抗干扰能力更强。在此基础上，进一步研究了不同章动角时多重交叉残差法对旋转周期的反演效果，结果表明章动角大小会影响旋转周期的反演准确度，且章动角达到一定数值后，卫星进动幅度过大导致RCS序列周期性模糊，无法用多重交叉残差法反演出旋转周期。