Determinants Of Audit Fees Research Articles

PENGARUH BIAYA AUDIT TERHADAP KUALITAS AUDIT DAN DETERMINAN BIAYA AUDIT

PENGARUH BIAYA AUDIT TERHADAP KUALITAS AUDIT DAN DETERMINAN BIAYA AUDIT

Impact of Board Incentives and Board Interlocks on Audit Fees

This study aims to examine how board incentives and board interlocks affect audit fees. Using multiple linear regression with panel data, this research shows a significant relationship between the board incentives and future audit fees. In contrast, this relationship is not significant for current audit fees. Furthermore, there is a significant relationship between board interlock in companies with future audit fees, while this relationship is not significant for the current audit fees. This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of audit fees.

Investigating Factors Affecting Audit Fees: Factors Related to the Professional, Cultural and Social Environment

The audit fee is determined primarily by the characteristics of the applicant (client), the audit firm, and the conditions governing the profession and community and the cultural environment. This research merely examines the factors related to the professional, cultural and social environment that affect audit fees. In this research, the qualitative study and the grounded theory method have been used and the opinions of the experts gathered through the interview have been analyzed. To validate the results of the research, the criteria for consensus and control of the members have been used. According to the results, the community's association with auditing, the perception of users and stakeholders from auditing, decision-makers and policymakers, and the degree to which competitiveness is rated, are recognized as the most important factors affecting occupational and environmental conditions. Meanwhile, factors such as the size and focus of the market and the degree of international association of firms and the risk of litigation against auditors in Iran are the most important intervening condition affecting the determination of audit fees. Also, the set of these factors, along with the implications of reasonable fees and living conditions, are described.

What is it going to cost? Empirical evidence from a systematic literature review of audit fee determinants

The audit market is subject to ongoing regulation to ensure or improve the quality of audit services. For this reason, international research on the audit market is highly popular. As part of this discussion, pricing is considered one of the most relevant aspects of audits. However, a remarkable heterogeneity of the control variables used in empirical studies can be observed. Prior meta-analyses on audit fees already summarized and categorized them for audit fee studies covering financial periods until fiscal year 2007. We contribute to the international literature with an up-to date and systematic review approach on audit fee studies published in international relevant scientific journals (JQ3 A + , A, B). In addition to prior reviews and meta-analyses, we finally suggest a standard model for the most important fee drivers that can be used for future audit fee studies. Our unique approach is based on an EBSCO keyword search with a sample of 385 papers published in international relevant scientific journals (JQ3 A + , A, B) and is using a scoring model to assess significance of audit fee control variables. On the one hand, we enrich the literature by a new state of the art paper on pricing within audit firms. On the other hand, we contribute to the international literature on audit markets from a theoretical point of view by deriving a new testable model of audit fee determinants. Therefore, our empirical results provide several fundamental insights that can be used for further empirical and theoretical research on the pricing of audit services. Thus, the results are meaningful not only for researchers within the field of auditing but also for experts in management, pricing or European legislature.

Do Audit Fees Reflect Unique Characteristics of Individual Executives?

SYNOPSIS We examine whether audit fees reflect characteristics of individual executives incremental to known determinants of fees. Using a novel executive effects approach, we find that unexplained audit fees exhibit a statistically and economically significant association with executive effects after controlling for factors related to the firm and environment. Specifically, executive effects represent between 20 and 39 percent of the total variation in unexplained audit fees. Our tests also show only limited evidence that observable proxies are associated with the auditor's perception of an executive's style, which suggests that our analysis identifies unobservable traits that cannot be captured by typical measures in archival research (e.g., gender, age, educational background, and board membership). Collectively, our study highlights the importance of executive characteristics in the determination of audit fees and suggests that future research may benefit from additional consideration of individual executives' influence on the pricing of audit services. Data Availability: Data used in this study are available from public sources identified in the document.

Organization capital and audit fees around the world

We examine whether auditors consider organization capital in audit pricing decisions. Utilizing an international sample from 40 countries spanning the period 2001–2017, we find that firms with high levels of organization capital pay high audit fees: a finding that is consistent with both the risk‐ and the agency‐based arguments for audit pricing. Additionally, our results indicate that the positive relationship between organization capital and audit fees is reinforced in firms with pronounced business risks and agency problems, whereas it is relatively weak in countries with protective employment legislation. Our study contributes to the voluminous literature on the determinants of audit fees by showing that auditors price the risks related to clients' intangible assets, especially those embodied in a firm's key talents. Our study also contributes to the scarce literature on the effects of organization capital in international markets.

Pyramidal Ownership Structure and Firms’ Audit Fees

ABSTRACT Using the sample of listed firms in China from 2004 to 2014, this paper investigates the impact of pyramidal ownership structure on firms’ audit fees. The results show that (1) generally, the greater the number of pyramidal layers, the more audit fees the firm pays; (2) compared with non-state-owned firms, this relationship is weaker in state-owned firms. Additional tests show that the number of pyramidal layers has a stronger impact on audit fees in firms whose voting rights and cash flow rights are separated. However, CEO duality and management ownership do not affect this relationship. Moreover, in state-owned firms, the positive relationship between the number of pyramidal layers and audit fees only exists in those firms whose ultimate controllers’ administrative level is lower. This paper expands the studies on the consequences of pyramidal ownership structure and introduces shareholding structure into the research on determinants of audit fees.

Determinants of audit fees in developing countries: Evidence from Egypt

The aim of this study is to examine the perceived level of importance with respect to each pre-suggested determinant of audit fees in Egypt. In particular, the perceptions about auditor related attributes and client-related attributes according to external auditors and client’s representatives (auditee). This study is based on the results of a survey conducted in Egypt. A questionnaire is designed to request the opinions of external auditors and client representatives about 28 audit fees determinant. The questionnaire was sent to 150 participants out of whom 63 responses are found usable. Data is analyzed using SPSS program and Mann-Whitney U test is performed. The results reveal that the perception of all attributes is greater than 3, implying that all pre-suggested determinants are perceived as relatively important, important or highly important. The most three important attributes are: the good reputation of the audit firm, the fact of being one of the Big Four and the level of complexity of the auditee. Furthermore, the results show that there is no significant difference in perceptions of both group of participants regarding the importance of each audit fees determinant. It is also evident that auditor-related attributes are perceived to be of higher importance than client-related attributes. This is the first study conducted in Egypt examining the determinants of audit fees, knowing that audit fees figures are neither available nor publically disclosed. Moreover, the study takes into account the Egyptian revolution which started in 2011 by adding two new determinants to the questionnaire; economic and political stability. This is in order to cope with the country’s situation and to check the extent of such environmental attributes’ effect on audit pricing.

Literature Review on Influencing Factors of Audit Fees

Audit fee refers to the remuneration obtained by accounting firms and auditors for providing professional services. The determination of audit fees requires mutual consultation between audited units and accounting firms. In order to ensure the quality of the audit report, as an important part of the auditor incentive mechanism, the establishment of reasonable audit fees is a necessary condition to ensure that the certified public accountants perform the normal information assurance function and ensure the effective operation of the audit work. Audit fee is the price of audit report. As the supplier of audit report and the demander of audit report, the relationship between supply and demand of both parties will inevitably affect audit fee. Therefore, this paper mainly from two aspects—from the perspective of accounting firms to investigate the impact of audit fees and the impact of customers’ perspective on audit fees to sort out the relevant literature on audit fees in these two aspects, hoping to provide reference value for the study of audit fees.

Determinants of audit fees: The perception of external auditors

This paper examines the perception of external auditors on the dominant factors that influence audit fees determination. By means of a survey, the study explored from the perspective of external auditors the level of importance audit firms attach to some identified factors in the determination of audit fees. A self-administered questionnaire was used to gather data from professional auditors working with practicing auditing firms certified and approved by the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Ghana (ICAG). Using a total of 339 valid responses, the study explored the dimensionality of the factors that influence audit fees by employing the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) procedure. Based on the factor structure identified from the EFA, we subsequently evaluated the level of importance auditors perceive these factors to be in the determination of audit fees. The EFA results suggest that audit fees determinants can be grouped into five distinct factors (Audit firm reputation, experience & expertise; Nature and scope of the audit; Market-wide factor; Client size; Client risk). The factor ‘Client risk’ was rated to be the most important determinant of audit fees distantly followed by the ‘Nature and scope of the audit’ factor. The ‘Market-wide factor’ was rated to be the least important factor in the determination of audit fees. The findings of this study provide some useful insights from the perspective of external auditors on the factors that influence audit fees from a developing country context.

Determinants of Audit Fees for Portugal and Spain

<p>This paper intends to analyze the determinants of audit fees in Portugal and Spain at a time when the audit profession has felt increasingly strong pressures on its ethical, independence and quality posture, showing that audit fees behave differently in these two countries. The liberalization of audit services in Portugal, with the elimination in 2005 of the table setting the minimum fees based on the size standards of the audited company, arouses the interest in perceiving the factors that determine audit fees. In Spain, the various financial scandals have placed audit fees in the main focus. These countries, which form the Iberian Peninsula, have a strongly related economic and cultural history, having also joined the European Union on the same date. In addition, audit fees have not been much studied in these countries, so it is important to perceive their behavior by comparing results. The results indicate that, in Spain, audit fees are determined mainly by the size, complexity and risk of the audited company. It was also found that in Spain the big four companies charge higher fees and that companies that change their audit firm pay lower fees in the year of rotation. In Portugal, the size of the audited company was considered the only factor contributing to the determination of audit fees. The analysis includes a sample of 39 listed companies in Portugal and 104 companies listed in Spain for the period of 2013 to 2015 using the ordinary least squares.</p>

CEO-CFO Personality Differences and Audit Fees: The Price of Conflict?

Using similarity between CEO and CFO personalities as a proxy for their compatibility, we find that CEO-CFO similarity is negatively associated with audit fees after controlling for other determinants of audit fees from the prior literature. We also find that audit fees increase (decrease) when personality similarity decreases (increases) following turnover in the CEO-CFO team. Further, the effect of CEO-CFO personality similarity on audit fees is mediated by how long the CEO and CFO work together, although the direct effects of personality similarity remain strong. These results are consistent with auditors acting as if compatible CEO-CFO teams reduce engagement risk and, as a result, audit fees.

On accounting’s twenty-first century challenge: evidence on the relation between intangible assets and audit fees

We inform the policy debate arising from the dramatic shift in US firms’ balance sheets towards intangible assets that has created a challenge for market participants to estimate firm value. While accounting guidelines have failed to keep pace with this change, the auditors’ perspective on this issue remains unknown. Our study reveals that auditors also find it relatively more challenging to audit firms with higher intangible assets. Specifically, we document a strong positive relation between audit fee and the proportion of intangible assets, after controlling for standard audit fee determinants. Further, we show that firms with higher proportion of intangible assets are associated with higher auditor effort and higher litigation risk for auditors, manifesting in higher audit fee. Ex post proxies of innovation success, such as patents, citation-weighted patents and ex ante R&D expense, indicate that firms with greater likelihood of innovation success are also charged higher audit fees. We find that high intangible asset firms in concentrated patent-generating industries (i.e. with lower expected patent litigation) are charged lower audit fees than similar firms in patent-competitive industries.

AUDIT FEES AND PROVISION FOR NAS ARE THREATS TO AUDITOR INDEPENDENCE?

Auditor independence is expected to give an unbiased and honest professional opinion on the financial statements to the shareholders. Impairment of an auditor independence erodes public confidence in capital markets. Along this it will lead to an audit failure, diminish of credibility of the opinions and reports given by auditors in relation with financial audits. Our study enriches the literature by connecting between audit fees and provision for non- audit services (NAS) by examining its link on auditor independence. This study makes two contributions. First, the finding is expected to provide a guide to develop or modify the existing model of audit fee determinants in Malaysia and secondly provide suggestion for issues that may be addressed in future research on the topic.

Loan Guarantees, Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure and Audit Fees: Evidence from China

This paper examines the relationship between loan guarantees and audit fees as well as the moderating effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR). We find that guaranteeing another entity’s debt significantly increases firms’ own audit fees. However, the disclosure of CSR information attenuates the fee-increasing effects of loan guarantees. A closer examination reveals that the role of CSR is attributable to the information effect rather than the signal effect. Our results are robust to the use of a quasi-natural experiment, a propensity score matching analysis, a Heckman two-stage treatment effect model and alternative proxies. This work makes new contributions to the current understanding of the consequences of loan guarantees, determinants of audit fees and value of CSR disclosure.

DETERMINANTS OF AUDIT FEE AT PUBLIC ACCOUNTING FIRMS IN EAST JAVA

This study examines the determinants of audit fee at Public Accounting Firms (KAP) in East Java, Indonesia. The determinants tested in this study consist of audit size, complexity, audit risk, non-audit services, and internal control. Respondents in this study are external auditors at KAP. Based on the convenience sampling method, the total sample in this study amounted to 60 respondents. This research uses Structural Equation Model (SEM) with SmartPLS analysis tool. The results indicate that audit size has a significant positive effect on the audit fee. Meanwhile, complexity, audit risk, non-audit services, and internal control have no significant effect on the audit fee.

The Role of Internal Audit in Corporate Governance and Contribution to Determine Audit Fees for External Audits

This study aims to determine the role of the internal audit function in good corporate governance and to know the contribution of the internal audit function to the implementation of external audit and the determination of audit fees. The method used is in-depth and critical review literature. The results of our analysis show that the role of internal audit in corporate governance is to assess the fairness of financial statements, to compliance with applicable standards and rules, and to provide creative advice for the effectiveness and operational efficiency of the company. Effectiveness and efficiency of the implementation of external audits is influenced by the availability of internal audits, knowledge and experience of internal auditors internal audit quality, level of coordination between internal auditors and external auditors, level of risk in the audit environment, external auditor work style, and inherent risk the amount of fee that must be given to the external auditor. So, it can be concluded that the internal audit function has a very important role in corporate governance. Moreover, a quality internal audit function can affect the effectiveness and efficiency of the implementation of external audits and can influence the determination of fees for external auditors.

Determinants of audit fees: Evidence from Poland

Abstract Unlike many studies concerning audit fees in Western Europe or the United States, literature concerning this kind of research is very limited in Central and Eastern Europe. This study aimed to show what factors shape audit fees in Poland. It was conducted based on data collected from the financial statements of 111 companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in 2018. The study used a linear regression model to verify the determinants of audit fees. The research results indicate a positive relationship between audit fees and company size, measures of complexity (in addition to the ratio of inventories and receivables to total assets) and the fact that a company is audited by the ‘Big Four’ accounting firms.

Which Audit Input Matters? An Analysis of the Determinants of Audit Quality, Profitability, and Audit Fees Using PCAOB Data

Practitioners and academics have increasingly focused on identifying audit production factors associated with more effective audits. Using proprietary data, we analyze two audit team production characteristics, client-specific expertise and year-round auditing, and find that both are associated with more effective audits. We separately analyze whether the influence of these characteristics varies by audit team member to better understand who drives audit quality. In contrast to the literature which has largely focused on lead audit partners, we find that other experienced team members characteristics (i.e, managers, senior managers, and non-lead partners) explain audit effectiveness results, whereas lead audit partner characteristics do not. We further find a positive effect of these characteristics on audit fees, after controlling for the quality of the audit, consistent with audits exhibiting credence good attributes. Overall, our results highlight the importance of client specific expertise and year-round auditing, especially by other experienced team members.

The Impact of Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) Financial Fair Play Regulation on Audit Fees: Evidence from Spanish Football

This paper analyzes whether the Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations set by Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) have influenced the auditing fees charged to football clubs. In addition, it explores the determinants of audit fees. We used a two-sample t-test with equal variances to determine whether differences are present. After this, we carried out a panel data regression with the clubs fix effect to estimate the determinants of audit fees in football clubs. Our findings revealed an increase of audit fees after the implementation of FFP regulations. On top of that, audit fees were explained by the presence of foreign investors if the audit firm was one of the Big 4 and if the auditor was a woman. The regulation change has had an impact on the audit fees charged by auditors for their services. However, this increase may be compensated over future years given the improving financial situation of clubs; therefore, the auditors’ risk diminishes and subsequent audit fees may be reduced. UEFA should monitor audit fees as well as the quality of the audit reports, which have become crucial to obtaining the license to participate in UEFA competitions.