The association between continuing professional education and financial performance of public accounting firms

This study investigates the relationship between continuing professional education (CPE), a mechanism of professional training, and financial performance of public accounting firms. Both training subject (partner and assistant) and training location (internal and external) are included. Public accounting firms are categorized as big, medium, and small-sized ones. Empirical data are obtained from the 1992–1995 Survey Report of Public Accounting Firms in Taiwan, published by the Financial Supervisory Commission, Executive Yuan, Taiwan, ROC. Univariate test and multiple-regression model are employed to examine the financial performance effects of CPE. Main results indicate that both professional training of assistants and external professional training are positively related to financial performance in big-sized firms. Next, we document a significantly positive association between internal training of assistants and financial performance in either big-, medium-, or small-sized firms. Finally, both external professional training of partners in big-sized firms and external professional training of assistants in small-sized firms are positively related to financial performance. Few prior studies investigate professional training of public accounting firms by a regression model due to availability of empirical data. Accordingly, evidences obtained in this study provide useful information to partners for decision-making in public accounting firms under the considerably competitive audit market.     

Does audit report information improve financial distress prediction over Altman's traditional Z‐Score model?

We analyze empirically the usefulness of combining accounting and auditing data in order to predict corporate financial distress. Concretely, we examine whether audit report information incrementally predicts distress over a traditional accounting model: the Altman's Z‐Score model. Although the audit report seems to play a critical part in financial distress prediction because auditors should warn investors about any default risks, this is the first study that uses audit report disclosures for predicting purposes. From a dataset of 1,821 Spanish distressed private firms, we analyze a sample of distressed and non‐distressed firms and develop logit prediction models. Our results show that while the only accounting model registers a classification accuracy of 77%, combined models of accounting and auditing data exhibit considerably higher accuracy (about 87%). Specifically, our findings indicate that the number of disclosures included in the audit report, as well as disclosures related to a firm's going concern status, firms’ assets, and firms’ recognition of revenues and expenses contribute the most to the prediction. Our empirical evidence has implications for financial distress practice. For managers, our study highlights the importance of audit report disclosures for anticipating a financial distress situation. For regulators and auditors, our study underscores the importance of recent changes in regulation worldwide intended to increase auditor's transparency through a more informative audit report.     

Sustainability reporting quality and post‐audit financial reporting quality: Empirical evidence from the UK

This study examines whether firms that appear to exhibit high sustainability reporting quality are less likely to engage in earnings management activities, thereby delivering financial information that is more transparent and reliable than that delivered by firms that do not produce high‐quality sustainability reports. I also investigate whether the association between sustainability reporting quality and post‐audit financial reporting quality is conditional on audit effort. Analysis of data drawn from FTSE 350 companies covering 2007 to 2018 indicates that firms that produce high‐quality sustainability reports are significantly and negatively associated with earnings management metrics. More importantly, this association is moderated by audit effort, measured by audit fees, suggesting that sustainability reporting quality reflects factors considered by auditors in their audit risk assessment practices. These results remain robust after several sensitivity analyses. I conclude that firms that devote more resources to producing high‐quality sustainability reports are likely to demonstrate an overall commitment to quality that alleviates auditors' concerns about the opportunistic use of sustainability reporting and reduces business risk, thereby reducing the effort auditors expend to verify financial reports.     

审计关系错配、盈余质量与整合审计收费

以2012—2015年沪深主板A股执行整合审计的上市公司为研究样本，基于整合审计背景探讨审计关系错配与整合审计收费，研究发现大所对小规模客户给予整合审计收费折扣；小所对大规模客户给予整合审计收费折扣。进一步研究发现，基于财务报表审计与内部控制审计的知识溢出效应及联动机制，执行整合审计有助于审计师识别公司管理层的盈余管理行为。     

事务所规模、组织形式对审计收费影响的实证研究——来自沪深两市2005年度的证据

本文主要考察会计师事务所规模和组织形式与审计收费之间的关系。通过对2005年度沪深两市上市公司为样本,运用回归模型对影响审计收费的因素,尤其是事务所规模和组织形式进行了考察。结果表明,凭借专业服务和品牌,大规模和合资会计师事务所对审计服务收取了更高的费用。同时,会计师事务所在决定审计收费时也考虑了风险、上市公司规模以及审计复杂程度等因素。     

Audit Team Attributes Matter: How Diversity Affects Audit Quality

How audit teams are structured and function plays a crucial role in determining the level of audit service quality. Despite this claim, little empirical research has been conducted on this effect. Using private data from two of the Big 4 audit firms, we fill this gap and document how diversity of audit teams influences audit quality. By combining the existing work in psychology and sociology with that in auditing, we develop our model by arguing that teams are composed not simply of single auditors but of sub-teams of individuals whose various combinations affect team performance. Starting from this premise, we study how the diversity of audit teams in terms of the different mix of work assigned to staff, seniors, managers, and partners influences audit quality and how this effect varies depending upon years of tenure. We also show that the proportion of leading auditors characterized by a common educational background and the percentage of female leading auditors affect audit quality. As an additional analysis, we examine how team diversity affects audit efficiency. The same elements found relevant for audit quality also affect audit efficiency.     

审计师轮换类别与审计结果——基于“关系”的视角

审计师强制轮换制度能够从制度上对审计师独立性给予一定程度的保证,而社会关系的存在会对审计师的独立性产生影响,但同时也能够增加前后任审计师工作交接的效率。以2007—2019年签字审计师轮换为样本研究发现,同一事务所内签字审计师的变更会使得后任审计师出具清洁审计意见的可能性提升,后任审计师审计当年发生财务重述的可能性较低,且可操纵性应计利润较低。但是,后任审计师获取的审计费用并没有显著降低。与不同事务所之间的签字审计师轮换相比,同一事务所审计师轮换情况下,由于更易进行信息共享与沟通,后任审计师的审计质量更高,且与前任审计师审计质量相比,后任审计师审计质量有所提升。     

What matters in disclosures of key audit matters: Evidence from Europe

New regulation in the European Union has introduced the mandatory disclosure of key audit matters (KAMs) to audit reports. The EU has identified KAMs as significant risks, significant transactions or events, or significant judgments by auditors. This paper aims to determine the factors that influence the number of KAMs that auditors disclose in the main European countries under the new regulation. We predict that the litigation risk, reputation loss, auditor–client relationship, precision of accounting standards, and the effect of regulators and supervisors’ activities affect the number of KAMs that auditors disclose. The sample consists of firms on the FTSE 100, CAC 40, or AEX 25 that have disclosed KAMs at the 2016 fiscal year‐end. In line with our hypotheses, the findings show that a higher number of business segments (complexity) and more precise accounting standards lead to the disclosure of a higher number of KAMs. Contrary to our expectations, the results indicate that a positive association exists between the audit fee and the number of KAMs disclosed. As audit fees can be related to higher client risk, this finding could indicate that litigation risk dominates any auditor–client dependence. Further, although auditors often view their audits of banks as complex, the findings show a negative association between banks and the number of disclosed KAMs. This evidence may be related to the fact that financial institutions are in a highly regulated and supervised industry that reduces the need to disclose the KAMs.     

Are the ‘Big Six’ ‘big’ in Belgium?

Studies in the United States, Europe and Australia have shown that the market for audit services is highly concentrated and largely dominated by the same ‘Big Six’ international audit firms. This paper measures the degree of concentration in the Belgian audit market through an empirical study of the number of professionally qualified auditors employed by each audit firm and some characteristics of their clients. Our calculations show that the concentration ratios, however measured, are low when compared with other countries, possibly due to the low value attached to the certification of financial statements by a professionally qualified auditor. This lack of importance can be explained by characteristics of the Belgian environment (e.g. a relatively passive capital market, dominated by a few large holding companies) which may induce companies to chose cheaper (domestic) audit firms. We also calculate Spearman rank correlations between the rankings of the audit firms based upon the different audit firm revenue proxies. All the correlations show it is of no importance which measure is used to rank audit firms.     

Legal Liability,Government Intervention,and Auditor Behavior: Evidence from Structural Reform of Audit Firms in China

This paper investigates how legal liability influences audit quality and audit fees, particularly in the presence of government intervention. Since 2010, all Chinese audit firms were required to transform from a structure of limited liability company (LLC) to limited liability partnership (LLP), which removes the cap on the liability exposure of negligent auditors. By adopting this natural experiment, we document the following findings: first, after audit firms reorganize as LLPs, auditors are more likely to (1) issue modified audit opinions and going-concern opinions, (2) constrain clients’ earnings management, and (3) charge a premium in audit fees, which suggest that exerting unlimited legal liability on negligent auditors improves both audit quality and audit fees. Second, the effect of the LLP adoption is more pronounced when auditors are from local audit firms, and clients are controlled by local governments. Further analyses suggest that the stock prices of clients positively react to the reform event, which indicates that LLP adoption improves the overall value of audits. In summary, our empirical findings are consistent with the argument that legal liability is able to effectively shape auditor behavior in emerging markets where the other institutional mechanisms are relatively weaker and government intervention is heavy.     

审计人员特征对分析性程序有效性的影响研究

当审计人员用分析性程序来评估会计报表错弊风险时,审计人员的职业判断发挥重要作用。审计人员本身的特征(专业背景、职位、职称、年龄、性别和从事审计工作年限等)对分析性程序评估会计报表错弊风险的有效性是否会有影响这个问题值得研究。对实验数据进行统计分析的结果表明:应用分析性程序来评估会计报表舞弊风险是有效的;专业背景、职位、职称、从事审计工作年限对审计人员判断有效性产生显著影响;年龄和性别对审计人员判断有效性无显著影响。因此,在组建更为有效的审计小组时,需要考虑上述因素的搭配。     

国家审计质量控制多阶段三方博弈分析

通过多阶段三方博弈分析后发现,制度安排、监督机制和审计成本是制约国家审计质量的重要变量。为了提高国家审计质量,应当在国家审计层面引入恰当的激励机制、惩罚机制、岗位责任制;完善国家审计内外监督机制和审计结果公告制度;通过建设高质量的国家审计准则及指南体系、加强国家审计队伍建设、提高审计人员职业道德和执业能力以及提升审计信息化水平等多种途径,来降低国家审计成本。     

Auditors' Ability to Resist Client Pressure and Culture: Perceptions in China and the United Kingdom

Ongoing corporate scandal and audit failure raise serious concerns about the ability of auditors to resist client pressure. Based on a sample of 93 auditors from China and the United Kingdom (U.K.), we analyze the effect of specificity of accounting standard, level of auditor tenure, provision of management advisory services (MAS) and degree of audit market competition on perceptions of auditors' ability to withstand client pressure in audit conflict situations. We draw on cultural differences to explain differences in auditors' perceptions in the respective countries. Our findings are consistent with national cultural characteristics identified in the research literature. We find that U.K. auditors perceive specificity of accounting standards, auditor tenure, MAS and competition as less likely to affect decisions as to whether or not to accept clients' preferred accounting treatments than do their Chinese counterparts. Additionally while Chinese auditors perceive MAS and competition to be significant factors, they perceive accounting standard specificity and auditor tenure to be insignificant. For U.K. auditors, these results are reversed. The results may be relevant to international audit firms operating cross‐culturally and seeking to apply common audit procedures or codes of professional conduct in different national settings.     

客户关系变动提高了审计费用吗？

在全球供应链不断发展的形势下，稳定的供应链关系愈发重要。从审计师风险应对视角探讨客户关系变动是否以及如何影响审计费用。实证结果表明，客户关系变动显著增加了审计费用。机制检验发现，客户关系变动使审计师加大审计投入并感知到更高的审计风险，进而收取更高的审计费用。进一步探究客户关系变动的原因及其对审计费用的影响后发现，客户自身面临财务困境时引发客户关系变动，提高了审计费用;但当企业经济政策不确定性较高时却降低了客户关系变动，从而降低审计费用。基于事务所层面和企业层面的异质性检验还发现，客户关系变动与审计费用的正向关系主要体现在高资质事务所、客户集中度较高和治理水平低的企业中。研究结论为探讨客户关系变动的经济后果提供了新的证据和视角，对当下中国如何进行供应链风险管理具有启示意义。     

Audit Fees in a Joint Audit Setting

Abstract

This paper uses the uniqueness of the French audit environment to conduct an in-depth study of audit pricing issues associated with the requirement to hire two independent auditors (joint audit). I use a model derived from Simunic's [(1980). The pricing of audit services: Theory and evidence. Journal of Accounting Research, 18(1), 161–190] seminal work to examine to what extent audit fees are influenced by the number of Big 4 joint auditors (zero, one, or two). After controlling for well-known drivers of audit fees that are specific to audit client firms (size, complexity, and risk), for governance characteristics and for auditor selection, the paper shows that the decision to hire two Big 4 auditors as joint auditors does not require the payment of a higher Big 4 premium compared to the choice of one Big 4 auditor paired with a smaller auditor, other things being equal. The choice of two Big 4 auditors thus appears to be a rational economic choice for large and international firms.     

Audit Services and Fees of Large Accounting Firms

In the audit literature, it was postulated that audit firms are differentiated due to their quality and, thus, the fees charged are a function of quality. We hypothesize that this may lead to audit firm specialization in different amounts of auditing, leading to a differential audit fee structure. This hypothesis is empirically tested by using a very large sample of audit fees paid to then Big Eight auditors. The results are consistent with the hypothesis in that three Big Eight auditors are observed to charge significantly different fees when compared with the other firms.     

企业会选择与竞争对手共享审计师吗?——基于经营范围相似度的分析

在选择最适合自身需求的审计师方面,企业会关注竞争对手的选择,并在享受审计专家服务与保护专有信息外溢之间寻求平衡。以企业的收入排名和经营范围的相似度衡量竞争对手,检验竞争对手间的审计师共享行为。研究发现,当行业内经营范围高度相似的两个企业互为竞争对手时,共享审计师的可能性较低;行业竞争激烈程度会放大竞争对手共享审计师的负向关系;但当外部审计师为审计专家时,会改变同行竞争对手不愿共享审计师的倾向;从经济后果来看,聘用同一会计师事务所的同行企业会有相似的经济决策。从财务层面构建衡量竞争对手的方法,验证竞争对手间的共享审计师问题,发现审计师不仅是财务报表的鉴证者,也是知识与资源丰富的信息中介与来源。     

Enforcement Actions and Auditor Changes

In this paper, we examine whether the uncovering of erroneous financial statements by German enforcement agencies is related to subsequent auditor changes. We argue that enforcement actions are likely to reveal information about the client or its auditor, which might affect auditor choice by initiating an update of mutual expectations. Our empirical findings indicate that firms with erroneous financial statements indeed have an increased probability of subsequent auditor changes. Firms also tend to change from a non-Big4 auditor to a Big4 auditor in this situation, suggesting that clients increasingly seek the reputation and services of Big4 auditors. Big4 auditors in turn do not appear to refrain from taking over error-firms as new clients in the German setting, which is characterized by limited auditor liability. Additionally, auditor changes are more likely to occur before the public announcement of an error, indicating that firms take action as soon as the uncovering of an accounting error becomes sufficiently certain.     

Do (Fe)Male Auditors Impair Audit Quality? Evidence from Going-Concern Opinions

Recent research indicates that there may be a relationship between the characteristics of the audit engagement partner and audit quality. In this paper, we examine the relationship between audit quality and the presence of a female or male audit engagement partner. We use the likelihood that an auditor issues a going-concern opinion (GCO), conditional on the client's financial situation, as an indicator of audit quality. Using a sample of 7105 financially distressed, private Belgian companies, we find that female auditors are, ceteris paribus, more likely to issue GCOs than male auditors. Our results also show that this effect is stronger when clients are either important (i.e. represent a material portion of the auditor's revenues) or high-risk (i.e. associated with increased uncertainties and risks). Collectively, these results indicate higher audit quality by female auditors.