Regulatory Quality and Global Specialist Auditor Fee Premiums

Abstract

SUMMARYWe first confirm the findings of Carson (2009) that global industry-specialist auditors earn a fee premium using a larger sample and a more extended time period. We then examine the effect of regulatory quality on the association between auditor industry specialization and audit fee premiums. We find that there are larger fee premiums for global specialist auditors in countries with stricter regulatory quality, indicating greater support for the argument that high-quality auditors can act as a complement to higher regulatory quality. We compare and reconcile our findings to prior studies, and show that inferences based on national-level auditor industry specialization differ from those based on examining global-level industry specialization.