Relation between external audit fees, audit committee characteristics and internal audit

This study examines whether the existence of an audit committee, audit committee characteristics and the use of internal audit are associated with higher external audit fees. Higher audit fees imply increased audit testing and higher audit quality. We find that the existence of an audit committee, more frequent committee meetings and increased use of internal audit are related to higher audit fees. The expertise of audit committee members is associated with higher audit fees when meeting frequency and independence are low. These findings are consistent with an increased demand for higher quality auditing by audit committees, and by firms that make greater use of internal audit.     

审计委员会-会计师事务所连锁关系与审计调整

本文运用我国独到的审计调整数据,研究审计委员会-会计师事务所连锁关系对审计质量的影响问题.研究发现,审计委员会-会计师事务所连锁关系能够提高审计调整的概率,这一结果在控制内生性和排除潜在替代性解释之后仍然成立,表明审计委员会-会计师事务所连锁关系能够促进审计委员会与会计师事务所之间的信息共享,从而提高审计质量.研究还发现,审计委员会-会计师事务所连锁关系对审计调整概率的提升效应,在机构投资者持股和管理层持股的公司以及国内会计师事务所中更为明显.进一步的研究发现,连锁的审计委员会成员为审计委员会主任时,上述效应更为明显;而连锁的审计委员会成员是否为独立董事对结果没有明显的影响.     

Independent audit committee members’ board tenure and audit fees

An independent audit committee is an audit committee on which all members are independent directors. This study examines whether independent audit committee members’ board tenure affects audit fees. On the basis of the prior literature, we formulate an unsigned hypothesis. This is because on the one hand, long board tenure audit committee members (defined as members with board tenure of 10 or more years) have greater incentives to protect their reputational capitals by purchasing increased audit effort, which positively affects audit fees. On the other hand, audit pricing reflects audit committee quality. Long board tenure audit committee members may have less need for increased audit effort because they can effectively oversee the financial reporting process themselves, which negatively affects audit fees. We find that audit fees are negatively associated with the proportion of long board tenure directors on the independent audit committee, consistent with the notion that audit committee members’ long board tenure results in lower audit effort.     

The effect of audit committee shareholding,financial expertise and size on interim financial disclosures

In recent years, corporate failures and accounting irregularities have led to concerns about the effectiveness of audit committees in the financial reporting process. In response, corporate governance committees in different countries have made specific recommendations designed to enhance the role of the audit committee in executing its financial reporting oversight duties. We investigate in this study, the effect of some of these recommendations by empirically examining the relationship between selected audit committee characteristics and the level of disclosure in interim reports of a sample of 262 UK listed companies. Specifically, the audit committee characteristics examined are shareholding of audit committee members (as a proxy for audit committee independence), audit committee size and audit committee financial expertise. Employing both a weighted and unweighted index to measure interim disclosure, the results indicate a significant negative association between shareholding of audit committee members and interim disclosure. Our results provide evidence of a significant positive association between interim disclosure and audit committee financial expertise. We find no significant relationship between audit committee size and the extent of disclosure in interim reports. Overall, however, our results suggest that audit committee characteristics have an impact on its monitoring effectiveness of the financial reporting process. These results have important implications for corporate governance policy-makers who have a responsibility to prescribe appropriate corporate governance structures to ensure that shareholders are protected.     

Audit committee composition and the use of an industry specialist audit firm

Independent, competent boards of directors and audit committees are said to be important mechanisms of corporate governance. The purpose of the present study is to empirically examine the association between audit committee composition and audit quality. Specifically, the link between the proportion of non‐executive directors on an audit committee, financial qualifications of directors and the number of audit committee meetings held in a year are investigated and expected to have a positive association with the quality of the audit firm used. Audit quality is proxied by industry specialization. The results support the link between a higher proportion of non‐executive directors on an audit committee and use of an industry specialist audit firm. Other measures of audit committee quality (those with a higher proportion of directors with financial qualifications and those that meet more frequently) are not significantly associated with the use of an industry specialist audit firm. Sensitivity analysis shows that the presence of an audit committee is linked to use of an industry specialist audit firm.     

审计委员会若干理论问题的探讨

我国对审计委员会的研究处于探索阶段,因此对审计委员会发展阶段的划分、审计委员会理论基础以及目的等理论问题存在诸多分歧。本文认为审计委员会发展应分为三个阶段,不同阶段有不同的标志;审计委员会不仅仅是受托责任,更主要是委托责任,其理论基础是委托代理理论;审计委员会的目的不仅仅是监督,而是制衡,是再监督。     

Audit Committee Members’ Reputation Incentives and Their Effectiveness in Monitoring the Financial Reporting Process

We examine whether the reputation incentives of audit committee members are associated with their effectiveness in monitoring the financial reporting process. Prior research assumes that audit committee members allocate their effort proportionately across all memberships on which they serve. However, our findings suggest that audit committee members with multiple audit committee memberships tend to focus their attention on the memberships that provide them with the greatest reputation incentives. Specifically, firms with a larger proportion of audit committee members where the membership is the most prominent are associated with higher financial reporting quality and more effective monitoring of internal control. Additional tests reveal that audit committee members’ reputation incentives are driving our results rather than independent non-audit committee members’ reputation incentives. We conclude that reputation is a strong incentive for audit committee members, such that it influences their monitoring effectiveness over the financial reporting process.     

Are fully independent audit committees really necessary?

Accounting scandals and concerns about the quality of financial statements have led to many calls for improved audit committee effectiveness. Prior research indicates that audit committee independence is positively related to effective oversight of the financial reporting process. Unfortunately, prior research has not provided an answer as to how much independence on the audit committee is enough. This is an important unanswered question because while Section 301 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) currently requires all listed companies to maintain an audit committee that is 100% independent there has been much debate regarding easing the SOX requirements for smaller and foreign companies. In this paper we examine whether the regulatory requirements of a completely independent audit committee are necessary to obtain the monitoring benefits related to audit committee independence that have been documented in prior literature. Our results suggest that the benefits of audit committee independence are consistently achieved only when the audit committee is completely independent. These results provide support for the SOX requirement of 100% independent audit committees.     

Reputation concerns and herd behavior of audit committees - A corporate governance problem

This paper offers an explanation for audit committee failures within a corporate governance context. The management of a firm sets up financial statements that are possibly biased. These statements are audited/reviewed by an external auditor and by an audit committee. Both agents report the result of their work, the auditor acting first. Both use an imperfect technology that results in a privately observed signal regarding the quality of financial statements. The audit committee as well as the auditor are anxious to build up reputation in the labor market. Given this predominant goal they report on the signal in order to maximize the market’s assessment of their ability. At the end of the game the true character of the financial statements is revealed to the public with some positive probability. The market uses this information along with the agents’ reports to update beliefs about the agents’ abilities. We show that a herding equilibrium exists in which the audit committee “herds” and follows the auditor’s judgement no matter what its own insights suggest. This result holds even if the audit committee members are held liable for detected failure. However, performance based bonus payments induce truthful reporting at least in some cases.     

Audit Committee Members: What Goes on Behind Closed Doors?

Using a qualitative research paradigm, this study examines audit committee effectiveness from the perspective of audit committee members of New Zealand listed companies. The findings reveal that audit committee members perform a range of overlapping tasks and justify their existence in their audit committees by fulfilling the ‘expectations’ that are placed on them. Many quantitative research studies have examined the association between different dimensions of audit committee inputs and financial reporting outputs. The empirical evidence, however, is mixed and remains far from conclusive (Bédard and Gendron 2010). One of the primary reasons for the inconsistent findings is the lack of understanding of the actual process by which audit committees perform their responsibilities. Using a qualitative research paradigm, this study examines audit committee activities, processes and effectiveness from the perspective of audit committee members of New Zealand listed companies. The study argues that performing audit committee duties is an intended process, whereby audit committee members justify their actions and the effectiveness of their audit committees. The paper contributes to the limited literature on how audit committees operate and, by doing so, provides possible explanations for the inconsistent findings of the quantitative audit committee research. In particular, the paper invites further discussion on whether audit committee members can be (or should be assumed to be) independent when discharging their role of overseeing auditing and financial reporting‐related matters.     

An Investigation of Audit Committees' Oversight Responsibilities

Audit committee performance has come under close scrutiny in recent years from a variety of policy-makers, interest groups and researchers. In particular, the adequacy of audit committee oversight has been challenged. At the same time, audit committees are under pressure to increase the scope of their oversight work. This study examines audit committee oversight from the internal perspective of active U.S. audit committee members. A two-part survey used Wolnizer's (1995) list of seventeen prescribed audit committee objectives related to accounting and reporting, auditors and auditing, and corporate governance in general as a basis to assess audit committee members' abilities to recognize their assigned objectives and explore their perceptions of the key tasks and issues currently addressed by audit committees. The results indicate that audit committee members appreciate the importance of all audit committee members having sufficient expertise in oversight areas related to accounting, auditing and the law. However, some respondents agreed they lacked sufficient expertise in many or all of these areas. In addition, the findings indicate that audit committee members tend not to recognize their assigned responsibilities, but agree with the proposed expansion of committee responsibilities. Using a multimethod approach, internal control evaluation was consistently listed and ranked as the most important oversight responsibility. These findings provide insight into the priority perceived by audit committee members as to their oversight responsibilities, and the adequacy of U.S. reporting disclosures as signals of audit committee work.     

Earnings management and corporate governance: the role of the board and the audit committee

We examine the role of the board of directors, the audit committee, and the executive committee in preventing earnings management. Supporting an SEC Panel Report's conclusion that audit committee members need financial sophistication, we show that the composition of a board in general and of an audit committee more specifically, is related to the likelihood that a firm will engage in earnings management. Board and audit committee members with corporate or financial backgrounds are associated with firms that have smaller discretionary current accruals. Board and audit committee meeting frequency is also associated with reduced levels of discretionary current accruals. We conclude that board and audit committee activity and their members' financial sophistication may be important factors in constraining the propensity of managers to engage in earnings management.     

Audit committees and earnings quality

This research investigates whether audit committees are associated with improved earnings quality for a sample of Australian listed companies prior to the introduction of mandatory audit committee requirements in 2003. Two measures of earnings quality are used based on models first developed by Jones (1991 ) and Dechow and Dichev (2002 ). Our results indicate that formation of an audit committee reduces intentional earnings management but not accrual estimation errors. We also find differences in the associations between audit committee accounting expertise and the two earnings quality measures. Other audit committee characteristics examined are not significantly related to either earnings quality measure.     

Audit committee characteristics and investment in internal auditing

Regulators and others recently highlighted the increasingly important role of internal auditing in supporting and interacting with the audit committee to ensure the integrity and quality of financial reporting. Likewise, one of the roles of the audit committee is to oversee the quality of monitoring mechanisms implemented by the firm, which includes the internal audit function. However, our understanding of the relationship between the audit committee and internal auditing is limited. We fill this void by providing the first empirical evidence of the association between audit committee characteristics and the investment in internal auditing. Our analyses, from a sample of 181 SEC registrants, suggest that the investment in internal auditing (internal audit budget) is negatively related to the presence of auditing experts on the committee and the average tenure of audit committee members, but positively related to the number of audit committee meetings (a proxy for audit committee diligence). These observations suggest potential complementary and substitution effects between the audit committee and internal auditing, and thus raise important implications for future research.     

Audit committees,corporate governance,and shareholder wealth: Evidence from Korea

This paper examines the effect of audit committee appointments on shareholder wealth in Korea after the Asian financial crisis. We find that stock prices generally increase with audit committee appointments. In contrast, chaebol (business group) affiliates and firms switching audit committee membership are associated with significantly lower stock returns, probably due to the management’s opportunistic behavior. However, the independence and financial literacy of the audit committee members appear to mitigate the opportunistic behavior. Therefore, our result confirms that the characteristics of the audit committee strengthen or weaken the existing corporate governance. We discuss the implications of our results obtained under Korea’s unique corporate governance structure.     

An exploratory study of the effects of the European Union 8th Directive on Company Law on audit committees: Evidence from EU companies listed on the US stock exchanges

Member States in the European Union will be required to establish audit committees for all public-interest entities, according to the EU 8th Directive on Company Law. This EU 8th Directive creates a convergence of corporate oversight for both audit processes and financial reporting process and thus provides an opportunity to examine and contrast associations that exist among audit committee, board of directors characteristics with audit committee alignment, and the impact of such alignment on earnings management. Results of a logistic regression analysis suggest that firms with audit committees possessing greater financial expertise, with larger boards and more independent boards are less likely to engage in audit committee alignment while firms with audit committees possessing greater governance expertise are more likely to engage in alignment. In addition, we find that firms associated with audit committee alignment engage in less earnings management.     

Audit committee,board of director characteristics,and earnings management

This study examines whether audit committee and board characteristics are related to earnings management by the firm. A negative relation is found between audit committee independence and abnormal accruals. A negative relation is also found between board independence and abnormal accruals. Reductions in board or audit committee independence are accompanied by large increases in abnormal accruals. The most pronounced effects occur when either the board or the audit committee is comprised of a minority of outside directors. These results suggest that boards structured to be more independent of the CEO are more effective in monitoring the corporate financial accounting process.     

Corporate director liability and monitoring preferences

An important issue in the regulation of corporate behavior is its impact on the monitoring configuration selected by top management. In this article, we provide evidence consistent with the notion that the recent trend toward audit committee formation, and the movement toward Big-Eight auditors, are responses to increased legal exposure of the board of directors, notably stemming from the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977. The costs associated with changes in monitoring configurations are also considered. In particular, it is argued that auditor assistance can substantially reduce the cost of audit committee formation. Because external auditors may have differential incentives to support audit committee formation, a hypothesis linking auditor identity and audit committee formation is offered. Recent auditor changes and audit committee formations of American Stock Exchange companies are examined to provide positive evidence for the theory. The data reveal a clear trend to form audit committees, and a movement to Big-Eight auditors. Underscoring the importance of auditor involvement, it is shown that audit committees were more likely to be formed given recent selection of a new Big-Eight auditor.     

审计委员会与审计质量——来自中国A股市场的经验证据

本文以中国2004年—2005年期间获得无保留审计意见的A股上市公司为研究样本,采用截面Jones模型估计出的公司操纵性应计利润(盈余管理)的绝对值作为审计质量的衡量指标,考察了审计委员会与审计质量之间的关系。研究发现,在控制了"会计师事务所规模"、"公司是否面临退市风险"、"审计意见是否带强调事项"、"公司经营活动现金流"、"公司盈余数量"、"年度"等指标后,设立审计委员会的公司的盈余管理绝对值显著比未设立审计委员会的公司小,这说明审计委员会能够显著的提高审计质量。进一步研究发现:审计委员会的成立时间越长,审计质量越高;审计委员会在2005年的作用比2004年更加显著。     

Explanations for Not Having an Audit Committee in a ‘Comply or Explain’ Regime

We utilise the Australian ‘comply or explain’ corporate governance regime to examine the explanations given for not having an audit committee and whether these explanations are consistent with underlying firm characteristics. We hand‐collect explanations provided by firms, and find the most common explanations are that the firm or board size is too small or that the firm is insufficiently complex to justify an audit committee. Thus, the reasons that firms provide for not having an audit committee are focused on internal factors limiting their ability to supply an audit committee. As we find that these explanations are associated with lower total assets, smaller board size and lower leverage, they are consistent with underlying firm characteristics. Thus firms are not providing inconsistent or unrelated explanations as pretexts to avoid forming an audit committee. Documenting that the explanations given for non‐compliance are associated with related firm characteristics should be of interest to regulators and policy makers.