The pricing of statutory audit services in Greece

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the determinants of corporate audit fees following the liberalization of the statutory audits market in Greece. Though the Greek statutory audits market is liberalized, it is relatively less matured, less competitive and, non- or less-litigious compared to those in the U.K. and U.S. Using data on fees paid to external auditors by 145 companies listed on the Athens Stock Exchange as of December 2000, we note that our results are similar to those of many prior studies conducted on matured, competitive, litigious audit environments. Specifically, we find that the size of an auditee, the number of hours spent on a particular audit engagement, the size of an audit firm and the financial condition of the auditee have positive and significant influence on the amount of fees charged by auditors. In addition, we find that auditor change has a significant negative effect on audit fees, especially in the large auditee segment of the market. Further, as our additional analysis shows, we document that audit fees and audit hours are endogenously related. We perform several sensitivity tests, the results of which suggest that our primary results are robust.