Higher Audit Fees Research Articles

Climate risk and audit fees: An international study

AbstractUsing a comprehensive global sample, we find that climate risk positively relates to audit fees. Specifically, auditors charge higher fee premiums when firms are located in countries with more stringent auditing regulations, higher information opacity and less adaptive capacity for climate risk. Audit fee premiums are also higher when firms are incentivised to manipulate earnings, less important to auditors, and audited by short‐tenured and industry‐specialised auditors. Our study provides worldwide evidence that climate risk induces more earnings management and increases the efforts of auditors in the auditing process, resulting in higher audit fees.

PERAN KOMITE AUDIT DALAM HUBUNGAN ANTARA METODE NILAI WAJAR DENGAN BIAYA AUDIT: STUDI KASUS DI ASEAN

This research discusses the impact of the fair value method on fixed assets, audit fees, and audit committees in ASEAN. The samples of the research are 277 manufacturing companies listed in the Indonesia Stock Exchange, Malaysia Stock Exchange, Singapore Stock Exchange, Philippine Stock Exchange, and Thailand Stock Exchange from 2014 to 2016. The results of the study found that companies that use the fair value method through a revaluation model to measure their fixed assets have higher audit fees than those that use the historical cost method. In addition, there is a moderation effect of audit committee competencies on the relation of fair value method to audit fee. The findings prove that the accounting and financial competencies of the audit committees reduce audit fees imposed on companies using the fair value method for fixed assets.

The impact of Confucianism on auditor judgment

AbstractThis study investigates the relationship between Confucianism and auditor judgment. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2006 to 2019, we find that the Confucian atmosphere in auditors’ hometowns is positively associated with their audit adjustments. The mechanism analyses show that Confucianism in auditors’ hometowns can influence auditor morality and further affect their judgment. We also find that the positive relationship between Confucianism in auditors’ hometowns and audit adjustments is reinforced by auditor exposure to strong Confucian atmospheres in their places of education and workplaces but weakened by Western culture diffusion. Moreover, auditors who are more influenced by Confucianism are associated with more improvements in client financial reporting quality, more upward and downward adjustments, more small and large adjustments and more audit effort but not higher audit fees. Overall, this study provides evidence that supports the imprinting effect of traditional Confucianism on auditors.

Do Shareholder Ratification Votes Impact Subsequent Audit Outcomes?

SUMMARY The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) have justified audit-related disclosure rules by asserting that such information would be relevant for shareholders in auditor ratification voting decisions. The underlying assumption, stated more explicitly by activists and others, is that such voting can influence auditors’ subsequent actions. A recent study by Tanyi, Rama, Raghunandan, and Martin (2020) tests this assumption. Using data from 10,326 auditor ratification votes, Tanyi et al. (2020) find that higher than expected shareholder dissatisfaction of their external auditors is associated with higher audit quality and higher audit fees in the subsequent period. The results suggest that auditors should pro actively engage with audit committees if there is higher than expected shareholder dissatisfaction. Auditors can also expect regulators to use such evidence in future rule proposals by the SEC and PCAOB, given past actions by regulators.

Signing auditors' cultural background and debt financing costs

This study explores the effect of signing auditors' cultural background on debt financing costs. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2007 to 2019, we find a negative association between signing auditors of Confucian origin and the cost of debt, indicating that signing auditors who grow up in strong Confucian atmospheres increase perceptions of audit quality. Furthermore, empirical results show that signing auditors of Confucian origin enhance accounting information quality. Meanwhile, these signing auditors can obtain high audit fees, attract more clients, and are more likely to be selected by client firms when changing auditors. Additional tests document that signing auditors' gender, education level, and working experience attenuate the negative relationships between signing auditors' Confucian background and debt financing costs. The negative effect of signing auditors' cultural background on debt financing costs is more pronounced in non-state-owned firms and firms with less analyst coverage. This paper extends the literature about the influencing factors of financing costs and provides insights into the economic consequence of culture.

State-owned enterprises' board characteristics and audit fees: an international perspective in view of economic freedom, political democracy and protection of minority shareholders

PurposeThe paper examines the relationship between board effectiveness and audit fees for state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Furthermore, given the unique nature of SOEs, the paper assesses country-level influences, such as economic freedom, political democracy and protection of minority shareholders, which can impact board effectiveness and audit fees.Design/methodology/approachA combination of two-stage and ordinary least squares regression is used to examine the board characteristics-audit fee relationship for SOEs in a multinational setting during the period from 2016 to 2018.FindingsThe results indicate that board characteristics that represent a high level of effectiveness are associated with higher audit fees in SOEs. Furthermore, the findings suggest SOE's operating in countries evidencing medium levels of democracy and economic freedom and medium to high levels of protection of minority shareholders may be motivated to reduce agency conflicts by promoting accountability and transparency, thereby demanding increasing levels of corporate governance, monitoring and audit quality, thereby increasing audit fees.Practical implicationsThe results provide further support for the OECD (2015) guidelines promoting the use of high-quality external audits in SOEs.Originality/valueAs a result of the scarceness of research in this area, the current study extends the literature by examining the role of corporate governance and audit fees in SOEs, while examining the influence of economic freedom, political democracy and protection of minority shareholders.

The impact of COVID-19 restrictions on audit fees and audit delay: evidence from auditor local offices

PurposeThis study aims to examine the impact of COVID-19 public health restrictions on audit fees and audit delay at the auditor local office level.Design/methodology/approachThe authors take advantage of the availability of the state-by-state lockdown data to measure the degree of public health restrictions in auditor office locations. Using multivariate regression analysis, this study empirically investigates the impact of the length of lockdown in auditors’ office locations on audit fees and audit delay. The authors also examine whether office-level characteristics (i.e. office size and office-level client importance) moderate the association between the length of statewide lockdown and both audit fees and audit delay.FindingsThe authors find that a longer lockdown in auditors’ office locations is associated with higher audit fees and longer audit delay. The increase in audit fees and audit delay due to lockdown is higher for clients of larger local offices than those of smaller offices. In contrast, the positive impact of lockdown on audit fees and audit delay is less for more economically significant clients of an auditor office than that for less significant clients. Smaller clients are more likely to bear the higher cost of audits and experience longer audit delay during the pandemic.Originality/valueThe results suggest that COVID-19 restrictions have forced auditors to change the nature, scope and timing of their tests, resulting in higher audit fees and longer delays in completing audit engagements. Beyond the main effect of lockdowns on audit fees and audit delay, the study finds evidence of the moderating effect of auditor office size and office-level client importance, providing some insights on how auditor local offices cope with COVID-19 restrictions.

Costs and benefits of auditors' disclosure of critical audit matters: Initial evidence from the United States

In an effort to make audit reports more informative to financial statement users, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) requires an expanded audit report in which auditors are required to disclose critical audit matters (CAMs). The new standard (AS 3101) became effective for audits of financial statements of large accelerated filers for fiscal years ending on or after June 30, 2019. Using a sample of annual reports of large accelerated filers with and without CAM disclosures, we examine the costs and benefits of the mandatory disclosure of CAMs in auditors' reports. Our evidence suggests that compared to auditor reports reporting no CAMs, the presence of a single CAM disclosure in the auditor's report provides incremental information to equity investors without a significant increase in audit costs. However, using the benchmark of a single CAM disclosure, multiple CAMs in an auditor's report results in higher audit fees and longer audit delays.

Partner-Level internal control opinion shopping and its economic consequences: Evidence from “SOX 404” in an emerging market

This study examines whether firms engage in internal control opinion shopping (ICOS) at audit partner level and its economic consequences. Based on the Chinese setting where the identities of audit partners are publicly disclosed and the requirements for internal control reporting are akin to SOX 404, we do find that firms successfully engage in ICOS at partner level. Furthermore, partner-level ICOS is associated with lower earnings quality and more tunneling activities. However, it seems that investors are not able to perceive the ICOS behavior, as evidenced by the indistinguishable market reactions to earnings announcements between ICOS firms and their counterparts. Moreover, successful partner-level ICOS firms do not remedy their internal control weaknesses in a timely manner and are more likely to receive sanctions from regulators. Further analyses suggest that firms engaged in partner-level ICOS are more likely to be charged with higher audit fees and firms whose CEOs are about to retire in the near future are more likely to conduct ICOS. This study fills the gap in the literature by investigating the outcomes of and market reactions to opinion shopping in the context of internal controls.

Audit committee gender diversity and audit fees: The role of dual-class share structure

The paper examines the role of dual-class share structure on the nexus between the presence of at least one female member on the audit committee (gender diversity) and audit fees. The study estimates a regression model using 2,519 firm-year observations for 475 public U.S. firms, and in line with the view that gender diversity helps firms to be more attentive and committee members act within their control to ensure a higher level of audit coverage, the study finds that gender diversity is associated with higher audit fees. Further, this study reports that the interaction of dual-class share structure and gender diversity is associated with lower audit fees. This highlights the merits of dual-class share structures which continue to be a subject of much debate. This study also contributes to the literature that provides insight into how context or situational factors moderate the impact of gender diversity on audit fees.

FINANCIAL DISTRESS AND MANAGERIAL ABILITY ON AUDIT FEE

Research Purposes. This paper examines the effect of managerial ability on audit fees, examines the effect of financial difficulties on the relationship between managerial ability and audit fees, and examines the effect of opportunistic reporting carried out by management in the form of earning management on audit fees. Research Method. The studies that were carried out used secondary data from 139 non-financial companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange from 2016 to 2020. Research Result and Findings. Through a linear regression of panel data, the study found that higher amount of audit fees was positively influenced by the manager's ability to manage company resources and found that abnormal cash flow real earning management had a positive influence on audit fees. The study also found that financial difficulties did not moderate the relationship between a company's managerial ability and its audit fees, but found that companies with financial difficulties had higher audit fees.

Mutual fund herding and audit pricing

This study investigates how investor trading behavior affects audit pricing by examining mutual fund herding in specific. When mutual fund managers herd due to information cascade, mimicking incentive, or agency problem, it causes information friction and weakens their monitoring effectiveness. Heightened governance risk is associated with higher audit risk and thus higher audit pricing. In our empirical tests, we find that herding weakens mutual funds’ information advantage and monitoring effectiveness, ultimately resulting in higher audit fees. To mitigate the endogeneity concern, we employ the natural experiment of the 2004 SEC regulation change on mutual fund disclosure frequency to capture exogenous change in herding intensity. Our findings are robust using propensity score matching method and alternative measures. Consistent with our conjecture, we document that firms facing stronger mutual fund herding are associated with deteriorated corporate disclosure quality.

PENGARUH KOMPLEKSITAS PERUSAHAAN, JENIS INDUSTRI, PROFITABILITAS KLIEN, UKURAN PERUSAHAAN DAN RESIKO PERUSAHAAN TERHADAP FEE AUDIT

This study aims to examine the effect of industry type, firm size, firm complexity and client profitability and firm risk on audit fees. Effect of industry type on audit fees. Effect of firm size on audit fees. Data collection uses a purposive sampling method for manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) during 2016-2021. A total of 39 companies were sampled in this study. Research shows that the type of industry, company size, company complexity and client profitability jointly affect audit fees for types of high profile and low profile industries and do not affect the level of audit fees provided the larger the size of the company, the higher the audit fees borne by subsidiary clients. the company does not affect the low audit fees given, and companies that have high profits tend to provide high audit fees because they are prone to misstatements.

Abnormal audit fees and accounting quality: further evidence from audit hours

ABSTRACT This study examines whether auditors compromise accounting quality by charging abnormally high audit fees. In particular, by drawing on the audit pricing theory, we investigate the relationship between abnormal audit fees and accounting quality, using fee residuals derived from an audit fee model that includes audit hours and hourly fees. Using listed firms in the Korean stock market, we find that the negative relationship between abnormal audit fees and accounting quality does not hold when we use abnormal audit fees estimated after controlling for audit hours. In contrast, we find a negative association between abnormally high audit fees, estimated after controlling for hourly fees, and accounting quality. Collectively, these findings support the interpretation that the negative relationship between abnormal audit fees and accounting quality, identified in previous studies, is driven by increased audit hours owing to lower accounting quality. Furthermore, we find that these results are driven by audit partner hours and senior auditor hours rather than junior auditor hours. This suggests that audit firms impose higher-level audit hours in the presence of low accounting quality, which results in higher audit fees.

Audit Quality And Financial Reporting Of Quoted Natural Resources Firms In Nigeria

This paper assessed the impact of Audit fees and Audit tenure on the Financial Reporting of quoted natural resource firms in Nigeria. Five (5) cited natural resource firms in Nigeria were selected to achieve this objective. The study used secondary data which is from the annual reports of the established sampled natural resource firms for ten (10) financial years (2010-2019).Financial reporting is used as the study's dependent variable and was regressed using audit fees alongside Audit tenure. In contrast, the firm size is an independent variable using the standard least regression method (OLS) to test the hypothesis. Thestudy's outcomes indicated that audit fee has a positive and significant relationship with financial reporting quality, while audit tenure also has a positive but insignificant relationship with financial reporting quality, Firm size, is only significantly associated with financial reporting quality. The study found that the higher audit fees have the likelihood of compromising auditors' independence, thereby leading to lower financial reporting quality. The study recommend that regulators of the audit practice to establish measures that can be used to regulates and monitor the pricing process of the audit so that to ensure a balance thatwould eliminate over-charging and or under-charging of the audit fees which evidence reveals could impair the independence of the auditor, thereby impact financial reporting quality of an entity.

Reimbursement Costs of Auditing Financial Assets Measured by Fair Value Model in Jordanian Financial Firms’ Annual Reports

This paper investigates the impact of financial assets measured by the fair value (F.V.) model, proxied by held-for-trading (H.F.T.), available-for-sale (A.F.S.), and the fair value option (F.V.O.), on reimbursement costs charged by external auditors in the context of the Jordanian finance industry. The study applied fixed-effects regression with a sample of 2408 firm-year observations of Jordanian firms from 2005 to 2018. The regression results confirmed that higher H.F.T. and A.F.S. of fair-valued assets were the primary cause of high audit fees; however, the F.V.O. had no significant impact. The impact of the F.V. model on audit reimbursement expenses has received little scholarly attention even in developing countries. The current study introduces an updated audit-fee model and new empirical evidence to provide more insights into this relationship and bridge a gap in the auditing literature. As a result, it investigates the impact of each fair-valued financial asset category on audit pricing for the first time. This research is unique in that it uses the F.V. model to investigate the association between each item of fair-valued financial assets and audit fees. The findings of this research provide current empirical information on the implication of the F.V. model in Jordan. The results contribute by guiding audit fee determinants in the context of Jordan, where there is no specific limit for audit fees determined by the government. The outcomes guide regulatory authorities in monitoring and regulating the audit profession and regulating the audit of F.V. model practices.

Fair value accounting and audit fees: The moderating effect of the global financial crisis in Jordan

This article introduces new empirical evidence exploring the relationship between the introduction of Fair Value Disclosure (FVD) and audit fees, and the moderating effect of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) on this relationship. This study is primarily motivated by the limited and inconclusive research on the monitoring costs resulting from FVD. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method using a sample of 222 Jordanian firms during 2005–2018 is applied. The analysis finds that a greater level of FVD is the major cause of high audit fees. Results are more pronounced for firms with larger proportions of subjective FVDs (Level 3 assets). A significant negative (positive) impact of the precrisis (post-crisis) period on the association between the proportion of fair-valued assets and audit fees is confirmed. The regression results confirm the negative effect of pre-crisis period on moderating the association between the all-fair value input levels (Levels 1, 2 and 3 assets) and audit fees. The post-crisis period has a significant positive effect only in relation to Level 1 assets. Findings of this study provide policymakers and standards setters with updated evidence originating from a non-Western setting about the post-implementation costs of FVD.

Audit committee members’ proximity to corporate headquarters and audit fees

PurposeThis study aims to investigate how audit committee members’ geographical location relative to corporate headquarters affects audit fees. The motivation for the paper rests on the observation that regulatory and market trends have significantly affected the composition of boards of directors and audit committees. To ensure that audit committees play their monitoring role, regulations now require directors’ independence and some level of financial expertise. The need to find directors who meet these requirements, as well as the advent of globalization and technological improvements lead firms to expand their reach when looking for directors.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use a sample of 1,517 firm-year observations of Canadian firms from 2008 to 2017. The study relies on multivariate analyses.FindingsThe results show that, among nonlocal audit committee members, the presence of foreign directors is associated with higher audit fees. In contrast, other nonlocal audit committee members do not have a differential impact on audit fees. This effect is more prevalent in large firms. Moreover, having a foreign chair of the audit committee as well as foreign audit committee members who are not accounting experts appear to accentuate the increase in audit fees. A possible explanation for the finding is that, from the supply side, auditors assign a higher risk to firms with a higher percentage of foreign audit committee members. Alternatively, from the demand side, firms with foreign audit committee members may ask for more audit effort. Further analysis indicates that having a higher percentage of foreign audit committee members is associated with a higher likelihood of restatements, an indication of low audit quality.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to document that auditors price the location of audit committee members and consider it when planning for their audit.

Business Strategy, Financial Reporting Violations, and Audit Pricing in an Emerging Market—Evidence from China

ABSTRACTWe examine whether a firm's business strategy is associated with financial reporting violations and audit fees in an emerging market setting. We follow the typology of Miles and Snow (1978, 2003) that describes a strategy continuum with the innovative “prospector” strategy and the cost-leadership “defender” strategy at the two ends. Using data from China, we find that prospectors are associated with more financial reporting violations and higher audit fees than defenders. Specifically, prospectors are positively associated with the occurrence of inadvertent reporting violations. Further analysis reveals that the increase in audit fees for prospectors is not different among firms exposed to different levels of business risk (proxied by ownership structure, auditor size, and leverage). We conjecture that the associations between business strategy and financial reporting violations and audit fees in China are due to firm financial reporting risks arising from accounting complexity.Data Availability: Data used are available from public sources indicated in the text.

Why do firms down-list or exit from securities markets?

In 2003, the German Stock Exchange instituted the Prime Standard as the highest regulated stock market segment in Germany. We analyze the firms’ delisting decisions from this market segment between 2003 and 2015, with a focus on different delisting reasons and firm characteristics. We identify 518 firms that listed on the Prime Standard at least once during the sample period of which 243 firms left this market segment. Of these firms, 107 down-listed and transferred to lower market segments and 136 firms exited the public equity market for the following reasons: 61 firms merged, 53 were insolvent, and 22 firms went private. Using cross-sectional and firm-fixed effects logit regressions, we provide new evidence for firms’ market segment and delisting decisions. Consistent with a cost–benefit analysis, we observe that inferior growth opportunities, low stock liquidity, smaller firm size, poor operating performance, higher audit fees, and more agency conflicts increase the probability that firms opt for a less regulated stock market segment or voluntarily go private. This raises the important issue of securities market reforms that best meet firms and investors preferences.