Corporate governance and auditor selection: Evidence from Taiwan

Abstract

This paper investigates the relation between corporate governance and auditor selection for firms listed in Taiwan. More specifically, we use the divergence between control rights and cash flow rights (i.e., the ratio of control rights to cash flow rights) to measure the extent of the corporate governance mechanism whereas we use three quality levels to define auditor type - Big 5 industry specialist (highest quality), nonspecialist Big 5 (middle quality), or non-Big 5 auditor (lowest quality). Using both multinomial logistic regression and binary logistic regression models, we find that the likelihood of selecting specialist auditors and Big 5 auditors increases with the ratio of control rights to cash flow rights after controlling for other variables, which suggests that firms with greater entrenchment effects are more likely to hire high quality auditors. Our study contributes to the literature of accounting and auditing by demonstrating the relation between corporate governance, measured as the deviation of control rights and cash flow rights, and selection of high quality auditors, which has not been explored in Taiwan where the interests of controlling and minority shareholders are not perfectly aligned.