审计费用的事前确定、异常审计费用与审计质量

实务中,我国部分上市公司年报审计费用采取事前确定方式,也就是在审计工作开展之前的董事会上确定。事前确定审计费用的动机何在,会产生什么样的审计后果?已有国内外文献尚缺乏这方面的研究。本文以2008～2017年全部A股上市公司为样本,通过实证考察审计费用事前确定方式对异常审计费用以及审计质量的影响发现:基于低价揽客或折价维持客户的经济动因,事前确定的审计费用显著偏低。进一步研究表明,在事前确定审计费用方式下,客户的审计质量更低。本文研究丰富和拓展了审计费用及审计质量决定因素的相关文献,同时也为监管机构规范审计费用确定方式提供了经验证据。     

Audit Fees, Non-Audit Fees and Auditor Going-Concern Reporting Decisions in the United Kingdom

The accounting profession has come under increased scrutiny over recent years about the growing number of non-audit fees received from audit clients and the possible negative impact of such fees on auditor independence. The argument advanced is that providing substantial amounts of non-audit services to clients may make it more likely that auditors concede to the wishes of the client management when difficult judgments are made. Such concerns are particularly salient in the case of reporting decisions related to going-concern uncertainties for financially stressed clients.
 This study empirically examines audit reports provided to financially stressed companies in the United Kingdom and the magnitude of audit and non-audit service fees paid to the company's auditors. We find that the magnitude of both audit fees and non-audit fees are significantly associated with the issuance of a going-concern modified audit opinion. In particular, financially stressed companies with high audit fees are more likely to receive a going-concern modified audit opinion, whereas companies with high non-audit fees are less likely to receive a going-concern modified audit opinion. Additional analyses indicate that the results are generally robust across alternative model and variable specifications. Overall, evidence supports the contention that high non-audit fees have a detrimental effect on going-concern reporting judgments for financially stressed U.K. companies.     

On the Relationship between Audit Tenure and Fees Paid to the Audit Firm and Audit Quality

Abstract

We investigate the impact of audit firm tenure, partner tenure, audit fees, fees for non-audit services and total fees on audit quality, as measured by discretionary accruals. Our sample consists of Spanish non-financial public companies for the years between 2006 and 2013. Results indicate that audit quality increases with audit firm tenure but decreases with partner tenure. Moreover, the level of fees paid to the audit firm seems to have a negative impact on audit quality, which is mainly driven by fees for audit services. In this regard, we do not observe any significant relationship between fees for non-audit services and audit quality. Our results also show that the negative relationship between either long partner tenures or high fees and audit quality does not occur when the tenure with the audit firm is long. Therefore, long audit firm tenures do not only seem to involve higher audit quality ‘per se’, but also moderate the negative effects of partner tenure and audit fees on audit quality. The results of this study, which are robust to several sensitivity checks, may be relevant for the current debate on auditor rotation and the joint provision of audit and non-audit services.     

国际金融危机、审计费用溢价与审计质量

以2003-2017年我国A股上市公司为样本,考量当企业受到金融危机冲击时,审计费用与审计质量之间关系的变化。研究结果表明,金融危机期间存在审计费用溢价现象,然而更多的收费却伴随着审计质量的下降。研究结论对于在市场危机环境下进行审计风险管控和审计市场的规范具有一定的借鉴意义。     

Governance regulatory changes,International Financial Reporting Standards adoption,and New Zealand audit and non‐audit fees: empirical evidence

This study examines the association between overseas and New Zealand governance regulatory reforms and New Zealand companies’ audit and non‐audit fees. Our models use temporal and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) indicator variables to relate the timing of the fee changes to the incidence of the overseas and local reforms. We find that audit fees increased in New Zealand over 2002–2006. Such increases associate reliably with the transition to and adoption of NZ IFRS and not with earlier overseas governance reforms. Our study also documents a decrease in non‐audit fees over the same period, but we find no IFRS effect for non‐audit fees.     

Internal Audit Quality and Financial Reporting Quality: The Joint Importance of Independence and Competence

In light of the growing importance of internal audit functions (IAF) and the limited archival evidence on internal audit quality, we examine an interactive model of IAF quality (comprised of competence and independence) to better understand the determinants of IAF effectiveness as a financial reporting monitor. Our tests support the hypothesis that the joint presence of competence and independence is a necessary antecedent to effective IAF financial reporting monitoring. In sum, our results show that, the answer to “what is the effect of internal audit competence (independence) on financial reporting quality?” is “it depends on the independence (competence) of the internal auditor.” Our study extends the understanding of IAF quality determinants in the realm of financial reporting as it relates to ongoing discussions by researchers, standard setters, regulators, and practitioners.     

审计师变更与审计质量:一个理论分析

本文通过建立股东、管理层和审计师三方参与的两委托人-单代理人博弈模型,研究了固定审计费用下不同审计师变更方式对审计质量的影响。研究结果表明,审计师强制性单期变更与审计师强制性定期变更下,审计师与管理层之间的合谋将导致严重的财务舞弊;而在审计师自愿性变更下,股东可以利用解聘现任审计师这一威胁来阻止审计师和管理层之间的合谋,使得审计师和管理层的最优策略均为真实披露公司的盈余信息,并发表标准无保留审计意见。     

Effects of Increasing Enforcement on Financial Reporting Quality and Audit Quality

A widely held assumption in policy making and empirical research is that increasing the strength of public enforcement improves financial reporting quality and audit quality. This paper provides a more nuanced view. In a model with a manager who can manage earnings, a strategic auditor, and an enforcement institution, we show that enforcement and auditing are complements in a weak enforcement regime but can be substitutes in a strong regime. Although stronger enforcement always mitigates earnings management, the effects of different instruments of strengthening enforcement are ambiguous. We show that they can improve or impair financial reporting quality and audit quality, depending on production risk, accounting system characteristics, and the scope of auditing relative to enforcement.     

Audit Firm Tenure,Non‐Audit Services,and Internal Assessments of Audit Quality

We use data from internal assessments of audit quality in a Big 4 firm to investigate the impact of audit firm tenure and auditor‐provided non‐audit services (NAS) on audit quality. We find that first‐year audits receive lower assessments of audit quality and that quality improves shortly thereafter and then declines as tenure becomes very long. Partitioning our sample between SEC registrants and private clients, we find that the decline in audit quality in the long tenure range is attributable to audits of private clients. For audits of SEC registrants, the probability of a high quality audit reaches its maximum with very long tenure. We also find that audit fees are discounted for first‐year audits but auditor effort is higher than in subsequent years. We find no association, on average, between total NAS fees and audit quality in the full sample but observe that total NAS fees are positively associated with quality for SEC registrants and negatively associated with quality for privately held clients. Our findings are important for regulatory policies related to audit firm tenure and auditor‐provided NAS.     

Beyond Tax Avoidance: Offshore Firms’ Institutional Environment and Financial Reporting Quality*

We explore how firms’ operations in Offshore Financial Centers (OFCs) through subsidiaries or affiliates affect the quality of financial reporting. Using a unique and large sample of firms that have headquarters in the 15 countries with the strictest legal regimes and have subsidiaries or affiliates in OFCs, we find that such firms exhibit lower financial reporting quality than comparable firms without OFC operations. We also find that as OFC characteristics become more prevalent, firms are more likely to engage in both accrual‐based and real earnings management. More importantly, after disentangling OFC characteristics into the opportunity for tax avoidance, regulation arbitrage and secrecy policies, we find that beyond tax avoidance, regulation arbitrage and the secrecy policies of OFCs significantly affect financial reporting quality. The causal effect of OFC operations is supported by the analysis of financial reporting quality when firms set up OFC operations. Our findings are robust to various additional tests addressing potential endogeneity issues. We conclude that the assessment of a firm's institutional environment must encompass the registration status of its subsidiaries or affiliates as well as its own.     

Audit Committee Financial Expertise,Litigation Risk,and Auditor‐Provided Tax Services*

The Sarbanes‐Oxley Act (SOX) greatly expanded audit committees' oversight responsibilities by requiring that they preapprove all non‐prohibited non‐audit services (NAS). Using data from 2003 to 2011, we find that tax NAS are significantly lower when accounting financial experts (ACT‐FEs) serve on the audit committee, suggesting that ACT‐FEs consider auditor independence risk, perceived and/or real, more than other members, including supervisory experts, to the point of not accepting any tax NAS, not even compliance. However, in firms with higher ex ante litigation risk, ACT‐FEs approve relatively more tax NAS than other members, suggesting that they accept the costs of a perceived lack of auditor independence from tax NAS in return for the potential benefits of increased financial reporting quality arising from tax NAS. Our analysis by subperiod (2003–2006 vs. 2007–2011) shows that this result is significant only in the second period. ACT‐FEs' differential evaluation of the trade‐off between the benefits and costs of joint audit and tax NAS provision between the two periods suggests the need for additional research in later post‐SOX years.     

Audit Firm Ranking,Audit Quality and Audit Fees: Examining Conflicting Price Discrimination Views

In this study, we examine whether highly ranked audit firms in Iran, as determined by the Securities and Exchange Organization (SEO), earn a fee premium, firstly, by providing superior quality audit services or, secondly, due to reputation created by the ranking system implemented by the SEO. We employ price discrimination theory, and we test quality discrimination versus brand reputation explanations in the context of a unique institutional setting (where international audit firms are not allowed to operate). The data are derived from firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) for the period 2006 to 2015. Our results show that the quality of audit services (using all of our measures) provided by the highest ranked audit firms is not superior to that of the non-highest ranked firms. In addition, the audit fee models suggest that the highest ranked firms charge significantly more audit fees compared to lower ranked firms. We employ several sensitivity tests and the results do not change materially. Such findings go against the “quality-based price discrimination” view but support the reputation-based view, and make a significant contribution towards understanding the economic consequences of state-determined ranking of audit firms rather than allowing the market to determine quality differentiation.     

Client Importance and Audit Quality at the Individual Audit Partner,Office, and Firm Levels

We investigate whether audit partner level data provides a more powerful measure than office or firm level measures of client importance. We find that the likelihood of issuing a going-concern opinion (any and first-time) increases, and the absolute value of discretionary accruals decreases, in relation to the proportion of audit fees to the total audit fees received by audit partners from all their clients. We also find that the likelihood of issuing a going-concern opinion (any and first-time) increases, and the absolute value of discretionary accruals decreases, in relation to the proportion of non-audit services fees from a client to total non-audit service fees, and the proportion of total audit and non-audit service fees from a client to total fees from all their clients at the office and firm levels. Our findings provide evidence to regulators, audit clients, and stakeholders that audit partners do not succumb to pressure from economically more important clients as audit quality has a positive association with client importance.     

Multiple Large Shareholders and Financial Reporting Quality: Evidence from China

In this paper, we examine the effect of multiple large shareholders (MLS) on financial reporting quality. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms over the period 2007–2018, we find that firms with MLS tend to have lower financial reporting quality. Our findings are robust to an array of robustness tests, including controlling for possible omitted variables, a Heckman two-step sample selection model, and a difference-in-differences analysis based on a propensity score matched sample. We further show that the effect of MLS on financial reporting quality is attenuated for firms followed by more analysts, cross-listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and held by institutional blockholders. Finally, we find that agency problems appear to be the possible underlying mechanisms through which MLS lower financial reporting quality.     

The Removal of a Specialist Oversight Body for Local Public Audit: Insights from the Health Service in England

The abolition of the Audit Commission in England and Wales removes the ‘protector of the public purse’. The oversight body and its audit practice are largely replaced by the private sector regime and audit firms. We analyse the audit market for health service foundation trusts, an area of local public audit that operates without oversight from the Commission. We find evidence of premiums paid to some Big4 firms and that the presence of specialist public service auditors results in fee discounts. The firms limit their liability and assurance of audit quality is reduced under new audit regimes and governance structures.     

The Influence of Country‐ and Firm‐level Governance on Financial Reporting Quality: Revisiting the Evidence

This paper examines how firm‐level governance and country‐level governance interplay in shaping financial reporting quality. Using IFRS adoption as a source of variation in firms’ reporting discretion, and a large sample of European firms that mandatorily switch to the new set of standards, we find that in countries with low enforcement and weak oversight over financial reporting, only firms with strong board‐level corporate governance mechanisms experience an increase in financial reporting quality, consistent with firm‐ and country‐level governance mechanisms being substitutes. However, in countries with high enforcement and strict oversight over financial reporting, firms with either strong or weak board‐level governance mechanisms experience an increase in financial reporting quality, even if the increase is larger for the former group. Overall, our findings indicate that in the debate about the effects of governance on the quality of financial reporting, it is important to consider both country‐ and firm‐level corporate governance mechanisms.     

Disentangling Managers’ and Analysts’ Non‐GAAP Reporting

Researchers frequently proxy for managers’ non‐GAAP disclosures using performance metrics available through analyst forecast data providers (FDPs), such as I/B/E/S. The extent to which FDP‐provided earnings are a valid proxy for managers’ non‐GAAP reporting, however, has been debated extensively. We explore this important question by creating the first large‐sample data set of managers’ non‐GAAP earnings disclosures, which we directly compare to I/B/E/S data. Although we find a substantial overlap between the two data sets, we also find that they differ in systematic ways because I/B/E/S (1) excludes managers’ lower quality non‐GAAP numbers and (2) sometimes provides higher quality non‐GAAP measures that managers do not explicitly disclose. Our results indicate that using I/B/E/S to identify managers’ non‐GAAP disclosures significantly underestimates the aggressiveness of their reporting choices. We encourage researchers interested in managers’ non‐GAAP reporting to use our newly available data set of manager‐disclosed non‐GAAP metrics because it more accurately captures managers’ reporting choices.     

Disclosure Prominence and the Quality of Non‐GAAP Earnings

The SEC prohibits the presentation of non‐GAAP measures before corresponding GAAP measures; however, a large proportion of non‐GAAP reporters present non‐GAAP EPS before GAAP EPS in their earnings announcements. This noncompliance raises questions about whether firms use prominence to highlight higher or lower quality non‐GAAP information. For firms reporting non‐GAAP EPS between 2003 and 2016, prominent non‐GAAP EPS is associated with higher quality non‐GAAP reporting. Further tests reveal that nonregulatory incentives, rather than regulatory costs, explain this relation. Specifically, prominence is associated with higher quality non‐GAAP reporting in settings where prominence is not regulated, investors ignore prominence when non‐GAAP reporting quality is lower, and the minority of firms using prominence to mislead exhibit characteristics associated with weaker investor monitoring. Overall, we provide evidence that regulatory noncompliance can reflect an intent to inform, and that most firms use prominence to highlight higher quality non‐GAAP information despite prohibitive regulation.     

Audit market concentration,audit fees,and audit quality: A cross-country analysis of complex audit clients

Regulators around the world are concerned about the potentially harmful effects of high audit market concentration on audit pricing and quality. However, results in the overall literature have failed to reach consensus on this issue. We contribute to this debate by arguing that the audit market is segmented and that concentration in the Big 4 segment of the market leads to higher audit pricing. Accordingly, our analyses use international data and focus on concentration within the Big 4 group of firms across countries. We find that audit fees are increasing in our concentration measure for clients where the barriers to entry by competing auditors are higher, as proxied by client size, international operations, and IFRS use. Finally, we find evidence that audit quality is decreasing in Big 4 market concentration for these types of engagements. This indicates a wealth transfer from shareholders to audit firms when auditor concentration is high because these complex clients are charged more, but receive audits that are of lower quality.     

Financial Reporting Quality and Wage Differentials: Evidence from Worker-Level Data

We examine whether financial reporting quality affects worker wages using employer-employee matched data in the United States. We find that low financial reporting quality is associated with a compensating wage differential—that is, a risk premium—using three distinct approaches while controlling for worker characteristics by (1) regressing wages on firm-year–level and firm-level reporting quality, (2) documenting wage changes when workers switch firms, and (3) estimating a structural approach that separates reporting quality from performance-related volatility. We find evidence consistent with two channels: performance pay and turnover risk, where workers bear risks from noise in performance measurement and unemployment, respectively. To mitigate endogeneity concerns, we show that—after the accounting scandals in 2002 and after the announcements of an internal control weakness (ICW)—former Arthur Andersen clients and ICW firms pay wage premiums to employees, with magnitudes between 0.9% and 2.8% of annual wages.