On the effort-saving effect of audit committee–auditor interlocking

Abstract

Using unique data on audit hours from China, this paper investigates the effort-saving effect of the audit committee–auditor interlocking (AClk). We find that AClk is negatively associated with audit effort without any deterioration in audit quality. The results suggest that AClk has an effort-saving effect through information sharing between interlocked audit committee members and auditors. However, auditors retain the effort-saving benefits of AClk without sharing them with their client firms. Further analysis shows that the effort-saving effect of AClk is more pronounced for client firms whose auditors have industry expertise, for client firms that share the same individual auditor, or for client firms that share audit committee members with financial expertise.