审计师行业专长的治理效应研究——来自中国上市公司的经验验证

行业专长是注册会计师专业胜任能力的一个重要体现,培养行业专长不仅有利于增强会计师事务所的竞争力,也有利于发挥审计对于上市公司的治理作用。通过对2007—2010年中国上市公司的数据研究发现:审计师行业专长能够显著抑制上市公司的盈余管理行为,提高会计信息质量,但相对于非行业专长审计师而言,行业专长审计师所审计的公司盈余质量与企业价值并不显著正相关,说明市场不能识别行业专长审计师会计信息治理的特征,行业专长尚不能有效地发挥市场治理作用。     

上市公司选择审计师为何舍近求远?

本文研究上市公司选择不同相对地理位置审计师的影响因素及其经济后果,研究发现:公司越不复杂、风险越高、有股权融资需要、终极控制人控制权和现金流权分离程度越大以及国有公司倾向于选聘相对地理位置偏远的审计师;选聘相对地理位置偏远的审计师会提高公司盈余管理程度,降低公司透明度和公司价值,这表明上市公司舍近求远选择审计师的动机是公司机会主义。     

共享审计师特征对审计质量的影响

并购交易的不对称性使得共享审计师的作用越发重要,共享审计师对审计质量的影响也受到关注。文章选择2012—2020年A股市场中发生并购交易的上市公司为样本,验证共享审计师对审计质量的影响。研究发现：共享审计师通过发挥信息共享作用,能够提高并购方的审计质量;进一步研究发现,具备良好声誉的共享审计师出于利益循环的考虑,会在维持声誉的同时提高审计质量,推动共享审计师的正向调节作用;此外,行业专长这一优势也会为共享审计师提高审计质量起到促进作用。     

审计师行业专长降低了公司权益资本成本吗?——基于法制环境与产权性质的分析

文章基于中国特殊的制度背景,以2007-2013年沪深A股上市公司为研究对象,检验了审计师的行业专长对公司权益资本成本的影响.研究发现:(1)审计师的行业专长通过提高会计信息质量的途径确实降低了上市公司的权益资本成本;(2)产权性质和制度环境在审计师的行业专长影响公司权益资本成本的过程中发挥了调节作用,且这种调节作用在法制环境较差地区的公司中以及国有产权的公司中表现得更为明显.这说明具有行业专长的审计师在中国证券市场上发挥了替代性的保护投资者的作用.文章为法制进程相对落后地区如何通过外部审计来加强对投资者的保护提供了理论依据与政策思路.     

美国审计事务所行业专业化与审计结果之间关系的评价

审计事务所为客户提供的服务质量各不相同。行业专业化有助于企业通过规模经济增加对审计和非审计服务的需求,提高审计效率。同时,具有行业专长的审计师在做出审计规划决策时,能够更好地与客户一起评估审计风险。最后,行业专业化提高了企业的信息披露质量,降低了发布会计重述的可能性。本文试图对审计事务所行业专业化对客户相关审计结果影响的研究进行评价。     

关键审计事项:审计师的"免责声明"?——企业真实活动盈余管理和关键审计事项披露的差异化

文章以关键性审计事项部分的差异性为切入点,探究了审计师的风险管理行为.文章以我国A股上市公司2017年年报的审计报告为样本,检验了公司的真实活动盈余管理行为与关键性审计事项的差异化陈述之间的关系.研究发现,当公司存在向上的真实活动盈余管理行为时,审计师更倾向在关键性审计事项部分做出差异化的陈述,而且这种差异化更多地体现在审计应对部分,而非关键事项的描述部分.对于实施了向上的真实盈余管理的公司,审计师有更高的概率选择"存货"作为关键审计事项,而且审计应对部分的表述也更差异化.而应计项的减值被选择为关键事项的概率及其应对部分的表述则未受之影响.文章研究表明,审计师知晓公司的真实活动盈余管理,并对其开展了有针对性的审计工作.作为审计师的履职记录,关键审计事项可以视为一种公开披露的特殊工作底稿,在一定程度上具有为审计师"免责"的功能.     

审计师行业专长对审计收费的影响分析——来自2006～2007年我国审计市场的证据

本文在借鉴传统审计收费模型的基础上,采用我国A股上市公司2006～2007年的数据,对审计师行业专长与审计收费之间的相关关系进行实证分析.研究表明,我国的审计师行业专长程度较低,审计师行业专长与审计收费之间存在正相关关系.研究审计师行业专长与审计收费之间的关系对于规范审计定价行为、形成有效市场结构有重要意义.     

决策权配置、盈余管理与投资效率

本文研究了决策权配置与盈余管理的交互作用对投资效率的影响。研究结果表明,在决策制定权和决策控制权分离度较高的公司中,没有证据表明盈余管理会显著影响投资效率;在盈余管理程度较低的公司中,没有证据表明决策制定权和决策控制权分离度的高低会显著影响投资效率;相对于决策制定权和决策控制权分离度较高的公司来说,决策制定权和决策控制权分离度较低的公司的盈余管理更能造成非效率投资;相对于低盈余管理公司来说,高盈余管理公司的决策制定权和决策控制权分离度的降低更能降低公司的投资效率;决策制定权和决策控制权分离度较低的公司的盈余管理与非效率投资显著正相关;降低高盈余管理公司的决策制定权和决策控制权分离度会增加非效率投资。本文既拓展了已有盈余质量与投资效率之间关系的研究,也深化了决策权配置的经济后果的研究。     

公司控制权对会计盈余稳健性影响的实证研究

稳健主义是财务会计中一项重要的惯例，是传统会计中的一项基本原则。本文将Basu模型进行扩展，检验了上市公司控制权与公司会计盈余稳健性的相关关系。实证结果表明，大股东对上市公司的控制权越强，公司会计盈余的稳健性就越差。     

税会差异、审计风险与审计收费——基于中国A股制造业上市公司数据的实证研究

国内外会计研究文献发现,企业的税前会计利润与所得税应纳税所得额之间的差异(简称"税会差异")中包含了企业管理层进行盈余管理的信息。既然税会差异中包含了企业盈余管理的信息,那么有大额税会差异的公司,审计风险必然相对较高,审计师从而会增加审计工作量,提高审计收费。本文研究目的在于考察大额税会差异是否有助于解释审计风险和审计收费。研究结论发现,大额税会差异和较高审计收费之间存在正相关关系,这就意味着税会差异可以被审计师用来评估被审计单位的审计风险,从而决定自己的审计工作量和审计收费水平。     

上市公司内部控制审计 报告自愿披露的经济效果研究 ——基于倾向评分匹配法和双重差分法的分析

本文以2006-2010年间沪深两市A股主板非金融公司为样本,研究了上市公司自愿披露内部控制审计报告对盈余质量和权益资本成本的影响。首先笔者通过倾向评分匹配法为在样本期间内自愿连续披露内部控制审计报告的公司（披露公司）匹配了一组在公司特征上相似的、但在样本期间内没有披露内部控制审计报告的公司（非披露公司）,然后采用双重差分法比较分析了披露公司和非披露公司在盈余质量和权益资本成本上的差异。笔者发现,自愿披露内部控制审计报告的上市公司盈余质量高,权益资本成本低。倾向评分匹配法和双重差分法相结合的分析方法较好地解决了样本选择偏差和内生性问题。本文的研究发现为中国资本市场监管机构从2011年起逐步推行强制披露内部控制信息政策提供了经验证据,同时为公司管理层进行内控信息披露决策提供支持依据。     

Professionals inside the board room: accounting expertise of directors and dividend policy

Directors’ personal attributes have significant impacts on governance effectiveness. We study whether directors’ accounting expertise affects corporate financial policy and investigate dividend in specific. We construct a dataset of audit committee directors’ accounting expertise for Standard & Poor 500 firms from 2005 to 2012. We first verify directors’ monitoring roles by showing that firms with accounting expert sitting on their audit committees demonstrate stronger accounting conservatism. In our main tests, we find that these firms maintain lower dividend payment level, which are less sensitive to earnings volatility. This suggests directors’ advisory roles in financial policy. We further show that our accounting expertise cannot be subsumed by management ability. In additional test, we further examine the baseline results conditional on analyst forecast error. Our findings highlight the importance of directors’ professional expertise in fulfilling their governance roles.     

The impact of labour unions on external auditor selection and audit scope: evidence from the Korean market

We examine whether labour unions influence external auditor selection and audit scope. As a major user group of financial information, labour unions likely demand financial information of high quality and thus high-quality audits. As a union’s request for wage increases is likely strong when a firm is performing well, management facing wage negotiations with the labour union has incentives to manipulate earnings downward and may therefore prefer auditors who allow more discretion. Using union data unique to Korea during 2005–2008, we find that firms with a stronger labour union tend to choose higher-quality auditors (i.e. Big N or industry specialist auditors). We also find that unionization is negatively (positively) associated with positive (negative) abnormal audit fees and audit hours, and the effects are more pronounced when the union is stronger and more active. Given that departures from normal audit fees and audit hours in either direction arguably impair audit quality, this finding is consistent with our prediction of unions’ demand for high-quality audits. Overall, our findings suggest that labour unions play an important role in determining audit quality.     

Applying digital analysis to detect fraud: an empirical analysis of US marine industry

Firms have tendency to window dress their financial statements by reporting earnings to achieve reference points represented by N × 10 ^k . Such practice of reporting rounded earnings is likely due to (1) firms may believe that investors perceive a reported earnings of $1.99 million to be significantly less than $2.0 million; and/or (2) contracts between firms and stakeholders are likely to express earnings in round numbers. Auditors have employed more sophisticated digital analysis such as Benford's law, as part of their fraud detection processes. This study investigated the window dressing behaviour among firms in the US marine industry. The findings of the study suggest that window dressing is a significant practice among the marine firms. However, the extent of the pervasiveness of such behaviour is less severe among marine firms than among all publicly-listed firms in the entire US economy, suggesting that the quality of financial statements of marine companies is higher than the overall population of public companies.     

Does rice farming shape audit quality: Evidence from signing auditors level analysis

This study examines whether signing auditors from rice planting regions affect audit quality. Using a sample of 12,223 firm-year observations from the Chinese stock market over the period of 2004–2015, our findings reveal that signing auditors from rice regions are significantly negatively associated with the likelihood of unclean audit opinions, suggesting that signing auditors with rice culture are more likely to succumb to the managers and hamper independence, and thus are more inclined to issue favorable audit opinions, and eventually impair audit quality. Furthermore, audit firm size and industry expertise attenuate the negative relation between signing auditors with rice culture and audit quality. In addition, above findings are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests using different measures of audit quality and signing auditors from rice cultivating areas and our conclusions still stand after using the Heckman two-step approach, placebo test and differences-in-differences method to address the potential endogeneity problem.     

Gradual Product Replacement,Intangible-Asset Prices and Schumpeterian Growth

The paper develops a general-equilibrium model of scale-invariant Schumpeterian (R&D-based) growth. New higher-quality products are discovered through stochastic and sequential R&D races in each industry. The market share of an R&D race winner increases gradually and is governed by an exponential deterministic process. The introduction of gradual (as opposed to instantaneous) product replacement sheds more light on the effects of the rate of technology diffusion on long-run growth and on long-run dynamics of intangible asset prices. An economy with faster product diffusion rates experiences higher long-run innovation rates, faster transitional growth, and is populated by younger firms. As the typical firm becomes older, the earnings yield (i.e., the inverse of the price earnings (P/E) ratio) increases and expected earnings growth declines. Younger firms have lower earnings, lower market shares, but higher P/E ratios and higher expected earnings growth associated with their higher potential market growth.An electronic version of the paper is available at http://bear.cba.ufl.edu/dinopoulos/research.html.     

信任缺失、逆向选择与信任重建--基于乳业危机的研究

文章以中国近年来的乳业危机为背景,利用上市公司数据,从会计盈余价值相关性和股价事件性反应的角度,研究了信任缺失下的逆向选择问题以及政府和行业信任重建的效果。研究发现：（1）乳业危机中,由于公众对乳制品企业的信任缺失,这些企业取得的经营业绩无法得到与其他企业同等的评价,表现为乳制品上市公司会计盈余的价值相关性低于其他食品行业公司,从而可能诱发逆向选择问题,损害乳品产业的发展。（2）政府的制度建设和行业协会的产品推广能够起到信任重建的作用。经过强有力的制度建设,乳制品企业的逆向选择现象逐渐消失,行业协会组织的产品发布会则引起了相关企业股票正向的市场反应。文章的研究有助于企业、政府和公众了解信任缺失的影响和信任重建的效果,而且从会计角度解答经济问题的交叉研究思路和方法也具有较好的创新性。     

The Value Relevance of Earnings and Nonearnings Information in Regulated and Deregulated Markets: The Case of the Airline Industry

This paper examines the valuation effects of earnings and two nonearnings-based measurements (book values and operating cash flow) on security prices of airline companies under two different market structures: regulated and deregulated. The literature lacks empirical evidence in examining the relative importance of earnings and nonearnings accounting-based measurements in regulated and deregulated markets, especially in the airlines industry. We compare coefficient estimates of regressing stock prices on earnings, book value, and cash flow from operations of airline companies during regulated and deregulated times. A control sample of manufacturing companies is also used for supporting inferences from the airline sample’s findings. In a typical regulated market, using cost recovery plus an adequate rate of return on assets, security prices are highly aligned with nonearnings measurements such as the book value. In the airline industry, regulation took the form of guaranteed routes and subsidies to service rural areas, giving rise to a differential effect of both earnings and nonearnings measurements. Under deregulation, airline firms operate in highly competitive markets with large airline firms enjoying the benefits of economy of scale and service diversification. Thus, the asset capitalization (book value), cash flow, and operational efficiencies (earnings) would be major indicators in the market assessment of the firm’s future profitability and security price. This paper finds that nonearnings measures have higher explanatory power of security prices in regulated times for the airline firms. In deregulated times, although earnings have a stronger relationship with prices, nonearnings measures continued to influence stock price levels, reflecting airline specific economics.

公司资源的"隧道效应"-来自中国上市公司的证据

该文考察了中国上市公司在控制股东谋求自己利益的前提下,其盈余管理是否与公司资源的隧道效应有关.我们猜测在治理结构越差和超过监管阀值动力越大的公司,进行盈余管理的激励越强烈;当隧道行为变得困难时其也减弱.我们的实证分析表明应计利润总额和行业中值调整后的应计利润(INDUSTRY-MEDIAN-ADJUSTED ACCRUALS)与 H/B 股虚拟变量负相关,同时与下列因素表现出正相关关系:最大股东在公司的利益,高层管理人员在公司的利益以及董事会是否由 CEO 来控制.我们的结论显示了隧道问题在具有下列特点的公司里更为突出:一个强有力控股的股东,公司的 CEO 们对公司具有强烈的私人利益,董事会不是那么独立;然而当公司与境外投资者交易股票时这个问题减轻了.而且,中国资本市场发生的某些特殊事件也为我们的假设提供了支持.