Audit Fees for Initial Audit Engagements Before and After SOX

2009 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hua-Wei Huang ◽  
K. Raghunandan ◽  
Dasaratha Rama
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Audit Quality ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Pricing Decisions ◽  
Big 4 ◽  
Audit Fee ◽  
Auditor Change ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Media ◽  
Client Acceptance

SUMMARY: Legislators, regulators, and the media have expressed concerns that auditors “lowball” the fees for initial-year audits and that such fee discounts can lead to reduced audit quality. We hypothesize that initial-year audit fee discounts will be less likely in the post-SOX period than in the pre-SOX period. Using both fee-levels and fee-changes models, we find that Big 4 clients receive initial-year audit fee discounts of about 24 percent in 2001; this finding is consistent with results from many prior studies that have examined various periods prior to SOX. However, we find that in 2005–2006 Big 4 clients pay an initial-year audit fee premium of around 16 percent. We also document that the Big 4 are much less likely to serve as a successor, following an auditor change, in 2005–2006 than in 2001. Overall, the findings suggest that concerns about initial-year audit fee discounts are not supported by empirical evidence in the post-SOX period. The results also suggest that the Big 4 have become more conservative in the post-SOX period with respect to client acceptance and pricing decisions.

Spatial Competition in Local Audit Markets and the Fallout on Deloitte from the 2007 PCAOB Censure

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff P. Boone ◽  
Inder K. Khurana ◽  
K. K. Raman
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Audit Quality ◽  
Spatial Competition ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Audit Market ◽  
Big 4 ◽  
Audit Fee ◽  
The Face ◽  
Market Leader

SUMMARY We examine whether Deloitte's spatial location in local audit markets affected the firm's adverse fallout—in terms of decreased ability to retain new clients and maintain audit fees—from the 2007 PCAOB censure. We motivate our inquiry by the notion that auditor-client alignment and auditor-closest-competitor distance can help differentiate the incumbent Big 4 auditor from other Big 4 auditors and thus provide market power, i.e., inhibit clients from shopping for another supplier because of the lack of a similar Big 4 provider in the local audit market. Consequently, it seems reasonable that the increase in switching risk and loss of fee growth suffered by Deloitte following the 2007 PCAOB censure will be lower in local markets where Deloitte was the market leader and its market share distance from its closest competitor was greater. Our findings suggest that the decline in Deloitte's audit fee growth rate following the 2007 PCAOB censure was concentrated in the pharmaceutical industry, although the client loss rate appears to have occurred more broadly (across all cities and industries). Collectively, our findings suggest that audit quality issues override auditor market power, i.e., differentiation does not provide Big 4 firms market power in the face of adverse regulatory action. JEL Classifications: G18; L51; M42; M49.

Did the 2007 PCAOB Disciplinary Order against Deloitte Impose Actual Costs on the Firm or Improve Its Audit Quality?

2014 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff P. Boone ◽  
Inder K. Khurana ◽  
K. K. Raman
Keyword(s):  
Growth Rates ◽  
Audit Quality ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
The Other ◽  
Archival Studies ◽  
Big 4 ◽  
Audit Fee

ABSTRACT We examine whether the December 2007 PCAOB disciplinary order against Deloitte affected Deloitte's switching risk, audit fees, and audit quality relative to the other Big 4 firms over a three-year period following the censure. Our findings suggest that the PCAOB censure was associated with a decrease in Deloitte's ability to retain clients and attract new clients, and a decrease in Deloitte's audit fee growth rates. However, methodologies used in extant archival studies yield little or no evidence to suggest that Deloitte's audit quality was different from that of the other Big 4 firms during a three-year window either before or after the censure. Overall, our results suggest that the PCAOB censure imposed actual costs on Deloitte. Data Availability: All data are publicly available.

Small Audit Firm Membership in Associations, Networks, and Alliances: Implications for Audit Quality and Audit Fees

2015 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 767-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth L. Bills ◽  
Lauren M. Cunningham ◽  
Linda A. Myers
Keyword(s):  
Audit Quality ◽  
Matched Control ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Discretionary Accruals ◽  
Audit Firm ◽  
Association Member ◽  
Big 4 ◽  
Audit Firms ◽  
Audit Fee ◽  
Control Samples

ABSTRACT In this study, we examine the benefits of membership in an accounting firm association, network, or alliance (collectively referred to as “an association”). Associations provide member accounting firms with numerous benefits, including access to the expertise of professionals from other independent member firms, joint conferences and technical trainings, assistance in dealing with staffing and geographic limitations, and the ability to use the association name in marketing materials. We expect these benefits to result in higher-quality audits and higher audit fees (or audit fee premiums). Using hand-collected data on association membership, we find that association member firms conduct higher-quality audits than nonmember firms, where audit quality is proxied for by fewer Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) inspection deficiencies and fewer financial statement misstatements, as well as less extreme absolute discretionary accruals and lower positive discretionary accruals. We also find that audit fees are higher for clients of member firms than for clients of nonmember firms, suggesting that clients are willing to pay an audit fee premium to engage association member audit firms. Finally, we find that member firm audits are of similar quality to a size-matched sample of Big 4 audits, but member firm clients pay lower fee premiums than do Big 4 clients. Our inferences are robust to the use of company size-matched control samples, audit firm size-matched control samples, propensity score matching, two-stage least squares regression, and to analyses that consider changes in association membership. Our findings should be of interest to regulators because they suggest that association membership assists small audit firms in overcoming barriers to auditing larger audit clients. In addition, our findings should be informative to audit committees when making auditor selection decisions, and to investors and accounting researchers interested in the relation between audit firm type and audit quality.

Client Acceptance and Engagement Pricing following Auditor Resignations in Family Firms

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 137-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samer Khalil ◽  
Mohamad Mazboudi
Keyword(s):  
Ownership Structure ◽  
Family Firms ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Audit Pricing ◽  
Pricing Decisions ◽  
Big 4 ◽  
Professional Manager ◽  
Financial Restatements ◽  
The Family ◽  
Client Acceptance

SUMMARY This paper investigates whether auditors' client acceptance and pricing decisions following the resignation of the incumbent auditor in family firms are significantly different from those in non-family firms. Relying on the auditing literature (client acceptance and audit pricing) and using insights from the agency theory, we document that successor auditors incorporate a firm's ownership structure into their acceptance and pricing decisions following the resignation of the incumbent auditor. Big 4 auditors are more likely to serve as successor auditors following auditor resignations in family firms as opposed to non-family firms. The changes in audit fees following auditor resignations in family firms, however, are significantly smaller than those in non-family firms. These results hold when we account for whether a family firm is managed by a founder, a descendant, or by a professional manager, and when we use the percentage of shares held by the family members as another proxy for family ownership. Additional analysis further demonstrates that the likelihood of financial restatements in family firms in the post-resignation period are significantly lower than those in non-family firms. Overall, our findings suggest that Big 4 auditors perceive family firms from which the incumbent auditors resigned as being less risky than their non-family counterparts.

scholarly journals How Big-4 Firms Improve Audit Quality

2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (10) ◽  
pp. 4552-4572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Limei Che ◽  
Ole-Kristian Hope ◽  
John Christian Langli
Keyword(s):  
Audit Quality ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Private Firm ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
Unique Data ◽  
Big 4 ◽  
New Findings ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Enhanced Learning

This paper studies whether and how Big-4 firms provide higher-quality audits than non-Big-4 firms. Specifically, we first examine a Big-4 effect and then explore three sources of the Big-4 effect. To test the Big-4 effect, we use a unique data set of individual audit partners for a large sample of private companies and a novel research design exploiting the fact that auditees may follow the auditor who switches affiliation from a non-Big-4 firm to a Big-4 firm. Thus, we compare audit quality and audit fees of the same partner–auditee pairs before and after the switch. The results show that the Big-4 effect exists in the private-firm segment. More important, we find evidence for three sources of the Big-4 effect. First, Big-4 firms are able to recruit non-Big-4 partners who deliver higher audit quality than other non-Big-4 partners in the preswitch period. Second, enhanced learning has taken place after the switch. Third, the increased audit quality can also be attributed to stronger incentives/monitoring. These are new findings to the literature. This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting.

scholarly journals The Effect Of Auditor Change On Initial Audit Fee Discount And Non-Audit Services

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-106
Author(s):  
Hong-jo Park ◽  
Jeong-un Choi ◽  
Joonhei Cheung
Keyword(s):  
Audit Fees ◽  
External Audit ◽  
Accounting Firm ◽  
Big 4 ◽  
Audit Fee ◽  
Auditor Change ◽  
Non Audit Services

The purpose of this research is to verify whether non-audit services are provided without additional fees at the initial audit as a strategy to win an external audit contract, which could give the appearance of initial audit fee discount. From the results, non-audit services are provided at the initial audit, and the initial audit fee is discounted accordingly, only when the independent auditor is changed from a Big 4 accounting firm to a non-Big 4 accounting firm. However, there is no meaningful relevance in any other types of changes. Therefore, if the auditor is changed from a Big 4 accounting firm to a non-Big 4 accounting firm, non-audit services are provided without additional fees in order to win an external audit contract, and the publication of audit fees with a division between the audit service fee and the non-audit service fee may give the appearance of a discounted audit service fee.

The Association between Financial Reporting Risk and Audit Fees before and after the Historic Events Surrounding SOX

2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon L. Charles ◽  
Steven M. Glover ◽  
Nathan Y. Sharp
Keyword(s):  
Financial Reporting ◽  
Risk Measures ◽  
Risk Measure ◽  
Financial Statements ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Sarbanes Oxley ◽  
Big 4 ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Audit Fee ◽  
Before And After

SUMMARY: This study investigates whether the association between financial reporting risk and audit fees changed during 2000–2003: a time period marked by momentous and historic events for auditors. We find a positive statistically and economically significant relationship between financial reporting risk and audit fees paid to Big 4 auditors. More importantly, we predict and find that the relation between financial reporting risk and audit fees strengthened significantly in 2002 and 2003, consistent with a shift in the way auditors priced risk, likely in response to the events surrounding the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Finally, we provide evidence that a commercially developed, comprehensive risk measure effectively proxies for an element of risk beyond what has traditionally been captured by various risk measures in audit fee models: namely, the risk that financial statements have been intentionally misstated. We believe this risk measure will be of interest to future researchers.

Impact of firm’s specific factors on audit fee of quoted consumer goods firms

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-55
Author(s):  
Wasiu Ajani Musa ◽  
Ramat Titilayo Salman ◽  
Ibrahim Olayiwola Amoo ◽  
Muhammed Lawal Subair
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Goods ◽  
Audit Quality ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Ordinary Least Squares ◽  
P Value ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Ifrs Adoption ◽  
Audit Fee ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
The Impact

Greater pricing presume on audit service has been put by the regulations of the auditing and accounting practices for the disclosure of audit fees, since audit fee is directly related to audit quality. However, the audit fees perceived by the client is often different from the amount charged by the auditors. Hence, this study investigated the impact of firm-specific characteristics on audit fees of quoted consumer goods firms in Nigeria using a purposive sampling technique. Secondary data were obtained from annual reports of the companies for the period from 2009-2016. The empirical result from Breusch-Pagan Lagrange Multiplier Test (BP-LM) produced a chi-square value of 13.94 with p-value of 0.0001 indicating that pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) will not be appropriate for the study. The Hausman test showed a chi-square of 23.55 with a p-value of 0.001 indicating that the null hypothesis is strongly rejected. Thus, the only estimate from the fixed effect model was interpreted to explain the relationship between firm-specific characteristics and audit fees of quoted consumer goods firms in Nigeria. The result revealed that auditee size, auditee risk, auditee profitability and IFRS adoption are the firm specific characteristics that impact on audit fees with only auditee size and IFRS adoption being positively related to audit fees while the other factors are negatively related to audit fees. Based on this finding, this study concluded that the firm’s specific factors are the major drivers of audit fees in Nigeria consumer goods firms. This study recommends among others that companies should implement corporate governance principles that address issues relating to board independence and committee sizes to guide activities in the consumer goods sector since profitability behave negatively with audit fees.

Fee Discounting and Audit Quality Following Audit Firm and Audit Partner Changes: Chinese Evidence

2014 ◽  
Vol 90 (4) ◽  
pp. 1517-1546 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hua-Wei Huang ◽  
K Raghunandan ◽  
Ting-Chiao Huang ◽  
Jeng-Ren Chiou
Keyword(s):  
Earnings Management ◽  
Audit Quality ◽  
Audit Fees ◽  
Audit Firm ◽  
Audit Fee ◽  
Significant Attention

ABSTRACT Issues related to low-balling of initial year audit fees and the resultant impact on audit quality have received significant attention from regulators in many countries. Using 9,684 observations from China during the years 2002–2011, we find that there is a significant initial year audit fee discount following an audit firm change when both of the signing audit partners are different from the prior year. The evidence is mixed if one or both of the signing partners from the prior year also moves with the client to the new audit firm. We find evidence of audit fee discounting in our analysis of fee levels, but not in our analysis of changes in audit fees from the prior year. Sanctions for problem audits and greater earnings management are more likely when there is an audit firm change that involves two new signing partners together with initial year audit fee discounting.

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