Business Commons^™

Information Sharing Between Mutual Funds And Auditors, Ole‐Kristian Hope, Pingui Rao, Yanping Xu, Heng Yue

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper examines whether there is information sharing between mutual funds and their auditors about the auditors’ other listed firm clients. Using data from the Chinese market, we find that mutual funds earn higher profits from trading in firms that share the same auditors. The effects are more pronounced when firms have a more opaque information environment and when the audit partners for the fund and the partners for the listed firm share school ties. The evidence is consistent with information flowing from auditors to mutual funds, providing mutual funds with an information advantage in firms that share the same …

Spillover Effects Of Clients’ Tax Enforcement On Financial Statement Auditors: Evidence From A Discontinuity Design, Travis K. Chow, Jeffrey Pittman, Muzhi Wang, Le Zhao

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the impact of clients’ tax enforcement on financial statement auditors. In a regression discontinuity design, we exploit the firm-registration-date-based application of a new rule that assigns firms to two different tax enforcement regimes. Our analysis implies that auditors exert less effort–evident in lower audit fees and shorter audit report lags–when their clients are monitored by the more stringent tax authority. In results supporting that audit quality improves in this situation despite the fall in auditor effort, we report that clients subject to tougher tax enforcement exhibit a lower incidence of accounting restatements and tax-related restatements. Additionally, we find …

The Impact Of Client Information Technology Capability On Audit Pricing, Benjamin Hoffman, R. Drew Sellers, Justyna Skomra

Business Faculty Publications

This paper explores the question: “How does a client's information technology (IT) capability influence audit pricing?” Company data for the years 2004 through 2012 are employed. Firms appearing on the InformationWeek 500 (IW500) annual list of U.S. organizations with superior IT functions serve as a proxy for companies with superior IT capability. Our findings suggest that companies with superior IT capabilities incur higher levels of audit fees. In addition, as client size increases, the audit fees of firms with advanced IT capabilities increase at a greater rate than firms without such capabilities. These findings contrast with prior research …

Audit Fee Discounting In The Post-Sox Environment, Albert Nagy, Benjamin W. Hoffman

2017 Faculty Bibliography

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate whether the expected implementation of Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX 404(b)) (the integrated audit requirement) caused auditors to discount their audit fees for non-accelerated filers in anticipation of expected increased future economic rents (DeAngelo, 1981) from those clients.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper predicts that auditors charged their non-accelerated filer clients lower audit fees during the years 2005-2007 (in anticipation of increased expected future economic rents from the implementation of the SOX 404(b) requirement) compared with the years 2010- 2012 (when it had been determined that non-accelerated filers were permanently exempt from …

Ceo Equity Incentives And Audit Fees, Yongtae Kim, Haidan Li, Siqi Li

Accounting

This study examines whether CEO equity incentives have an impact on audit pricing. Prior studies investigate whether CEO equity incentives motivate executives to manage earnings for personal financial gains. Our focus is on whether auditors perceive CEO equity incentives to be associated with greater earnings manipulation risk and incorporate such risk in their pricing decisions. We find that CEO equity portfolio vega is positively related to audit fees after controlling for other determinants of audit fees, while equity portfolio delta is not significantly related to audit fees. This result holds after we account for potential endogeneity. The evidence suggests that …

Auditor Switching For Opinion Shopping, And Subsequnt Audit Quality And Audit Fee: Evidence From Post-Sox Period, Jong-Hag Choi, Heesun Chung, Catherine Heyjung Sonu, Yoonseok Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Theory suggests that firms engage in opinion shopping to obtain better audit opinions. However, there is scarce evidence on the economic consequences of the opinion shopping behaviors. In this paper, we examine the effect of auditor switches for opinion shopping on audit quality and audit fees. Using 30,333 firm-year observations over the 2004-2012 period in the U.S., we first document evidence that firms switch their auditors in search for better audit opinions. Next, we find that the audit quality of clients that switch auditors for opinion shopping is significantly lower than that of clients that did not switch auditors or …

The Triangular Relationship Between Audit Committee Characteristics, Audit Inputs, And Financial Reporting Quality, Jae Bum Kim, Benjamin Segal, Dan Segal, Yoonseok Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using the exogenous reforms to audit committees mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and a difference-in-difference approach, we examine the impact of changes in audit committee attributes (financial expertise, size, and independence) on firms’ audit inputs and financial reporting quality. Firms directly affected by the reforms experienced a larger improvement in audit inputs (measured by audit fees and the appointment of an industry specialist auditor) and a larger increase in financial reporting quality (measured by restatements of financial reports) relative to firms that were already compliant. Importantly, we find that the decline in restatements is not related to the …

The Triangular Relationship Between Audit Committee Characteristics, Audit Input And Financial Reporting Quality, Jae Bum Kim, Benjamin Segal, Dan Segal, Yoonseok Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using the reforms to audit committees mandated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the difference-in-difference approach, we examine the impact of changes in audit committee attributes (financial expertise, size and independence) on the corporate commitment to audit assurance and on the likelihood of financial statement restatements. Firms that were directly affected by the reforms experienced a greater improvement in audit inputs (measured by audit fees and the appointment of an industry specialist auditor) and a larger decline in financial statements restatements relative to firms that had already been compliant. Importantly, we find that the decline in restatements is not …

The Effect Of Internal Control Weakness Under Section 404 Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act On Audit Fees, Jong-Hag Choi, Jeong-Bon Kim, Soo Young Kwon, Yoonseok Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In this paper, we investigate the effect of the enactment of the SarbanesOxleyAct (SOX) in 2002 on audit pricing, using a sample of 252 firms that received an “Ineffective” audit opinion and other firms that received cleanaudit opinion on the effectiveness of the internal control over financial reportingunder Section 404 of SOX. Our analyses show the following. First,we find that auditors charge significantly higher audit fees for all firms inthe post-SOX period than in the pre-SOX period. Second, we find that auditors’opinions on the weakness in internal control (WIC) are positively associatedwith audit fees, and that the positive association between …

Audit Fees: To Disclose Or Not To Disclose?, Teng Aun Khoo, Soo Chiat Hwang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The authors argue that the disclosure of audit fees can provide a more level playing field in Singapore, and would also be consistent with the other major capital markets in the world. Auditors' independence is the cornerstone of the auditing profession, because without auditor's independence investors would not be able to rely on the so-called "audited" financial statements. Currently in Singapore, audit-fee disclosure is not mandatory except for banks as stipulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

The Association Between Audit Fees And Auditors' Opinions On Internal Control Weakness Under Section 404 Of The Sox, Jong-Hag Choi, Jeong-Bon Kim, Soo Young Kwon, Yoonseok Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) requires top management toestablish, maintain, and regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the internal controlover financial reporting (ICOFR), and obtain an auditor’s attestation. In this paper, weidentify 232 firms that received “Ineffective” audit opinion on the effectiveness ofICOFR due to one or more material weakness in internal control (WIC). We examinethe association between audit fees and the WIC for pre- and post-SOX period. Wefind that highly levered clients with the WIC paid greater audit fees even in the preSOXperiod and continuously paid the high fees in post-SOX period, whereas theloss-making clients with WIC paid …

The Association Between Corporate Governance And Audit Fees, Cindy K. Harris

Business and Economics Faculty Publications

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (“SOX”) established not only corporate governance reform but also legislated significant changes to the practice of auditing publicly held corporations. Rules implemented by the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) further reinforced stronger corporate governance standards. The effect of these reforms on the cost of public audits is indisputable: the initial rise in audit fees was dramatic as corporations complied with the new provisions. This paper examines the relationship between corporate governance characteristics and audit fees for a random sample of 100 publicly traded corporations drawn from the 2005 Fortune 500 list. The data is obtained …

An Investigation Of The Pricing Of Audit Services For Financial Institutions, L. Paige Fields, Donald R. Fraser, Michael S. Wilkins

School of Business Faculty Research

In this paper we investigate audit pricing for financial institutions. We modify the standard audit fee model for industrial companies by incorporating measures of risk and complexity that are either unique to or more relevant for banks, and that are used by bank regulatory agencies. For a sample of 277 financial institutions in fiscal 2000, we find that audit fees are higher for banks having more transactions accounts, fewer securities as a percentage of total assets, lower levels of efficiency, and higher degrees of credit risk. Higher fees also obtain for savings institutions, for banks that are more involved in …

Audit Firm Industry Specialization As A Differentiation Strategy: Evidence From Fees Charged To Firms Going Public, Brian W. Mayhew, Michael S. Wilkins

School of Business Faculty Research

This paper examines IPO assurance fees to assess the use of industry specialization as a differentiation strategy by audit firms. Theory suggests that as an audit firm’s share of a client industry increases their costs will decrease and their service quality to that industry will increase. In this setting, the impact of industry specialization on fees is indeterminate. We extend existing theory by considering both the supply and the demand for industry specialization. We conclude that the market for audit services is generally price-competitive, suggesting that auditors will be forced to share cost savings with clients. However, when an audit …

How Have The Professional Standards Influenced Practice?, Wanda A. Wallace

Historical Working Papers

Audit performance has improved steadily, largely attributable to the new standards, although definite room for improvement exists. Areas for improvement include exchanging audit reports between internal and external auditors, the use of audit programs and the use of statistical sampling.