Competition and Sustainability: Evidence from Professional Service Organization

Abstract

Two professional service organizations, an auditor and a tax agent, provide services to the same target clients. Taiwan established a new regulatory system for tax agents in 2004, which directly enhances their ability to compete with auditors. From the perspective of the economic theory of regulation, this study investigates the indirect effects of the new regulatory system on the business of auditors. We focus on auditors in proprietorship audit firms and divide the sample period into before and after 2004. This study establishes a cross-sectional regression equation to test our hypotheses. We classify the types of business into three levels, total amount, three categories and six individual items. Based on the 1989–2017 Survey Report of Audit Firms in Taiwan, we find that auditors perform better after 2004, indicating that increased competition leads to positive sustainability for auditors. Further results show that the effects of the regulation on auditors’ performance are greater after 2004, additional evidence of the positive indirect effect on auditors. This study contributes to the literature, provides public policy implications to regulators and contributes managerial information to auditors.