Accounting Accruals, Audit Quality, and Audit Pricing

IF 2.5 3区 管理学 Q2 BUSINESS, FINANCE European Accounting Review Pub Date : 2023-10-23 DOI:10.1080/09638180.2023.2270002
Sebastian Kronenberger
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Thus, conservatism enhances the competitive advantage of the incumbent and increases the future quasi-rent, which is used for a higher initial low-balling discount. I further show implications of the auditor-firm interaction for fee-cutting, a common proxy for low-balling, and the frequency of modified audit opinions, a common proxy for audit quality. Thus, my model provides a theoretical foundation for the connection between high low-balling discounts, accounting accruals, and audit quality.Keywords: Low-ballingFee-cuttingAudit qualityAccounting accruals AcknowledgmentsAccepted by Robert F. Göx. I thank Christopher Bleibtreu, Ralf Ewert, Qi Gao, Yasmin Hoffmann, Bill Kinney, Thomas Kourouxous, Sandra K. Kronenberger, Peter Krenn, Volker Laux, Paul Newman, Elisabeth Plietzsch, Stefan Schantl, Thomas Simon, Dirk Simons, Alfred Wagenhofer, Anna Waldner, and participants of the 12th Workshop on Accounting and Economics in Tilburg, the 39th EAA Annual Congress in Maastricht, the 83th VHB Annual Congress, the 12th EARNet Symposium Komma and seminar participants at the University of Magdeburg for helpful comments. I acknowledge funding from the Austrian Science Fond (FWF), Project W 1229.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Over the total time period, the auditor never earns rent because it is used to attract the engagement in the first period. Therefore, it is called quasi-rent.2 See also Kanodia and Mukherji (Citation1994), Lee and Gu (Citation1998), Chan (Citation1999), Zhang (Citation1999), and Simons (Citation2011).3 See also Göx and Wagenhofer (Citation2009, Citation2010), Nan and Wen (Citation2014), and Caskey and Laux (Citation2017).4 Further studies include Gul et al. (Citation2009), Ghosh and Lustgarten (Citation2006) and Ettredge and Greenberg (Citation1990).5 In addition, Barua et al. (Citation2020) provide evidence that audit fee studies are often subject to a systematic bias because only the succeeding auditor's fee must be mandatorily disclosed. The study shows that the fee discount often disappears after adjusting for the bias.6 To economize on notation, I drop the time index on the economic state, the accounting signal, and the audit opinion. Thus, θt,h=θh and θt,l=θl, St,h=Sh and St,l=Sl, Rt,h=Rh and Rt,l=Rl.7 The owner-manager already designed the distributions in the most favorable manner and they cannot be improved further.8 As I discuss in Section 5, as long as the lenders and auditors rationally anticipate the reporting incentives, and there is a variation between periods, the results of the paper hold. This includes settings, in which the owner-manager chooses accruals in each period.9 Figure 2 uses symmetric distributions along c = 0.5 for the interval Et∈[0,1], fθh(Et)=1−(1−Et)2 and fθl(Et)=1−Et2. A neutral accounting system aligns economic and accounting income. In an asymmetric distribution, where probability mass of fθh(Et) shifts to the left but still fulfills all assumptions stated above, a neutral accounting system would imply overstated accounting income relative to the economic income.10 This aspect of the assumption is not critical to the model results. Variable start-up cost could also decrease with more audit effort; for example, when an audit team member becomes faster every day, with more repetitions of the same task. As demonstrated in Section 3.3, the results of the study hold as long as the incumbent has a competitive advantage over the audit competitor, which is connected to the audit quality in period two.11 P1(θh|Rl)=p∫0cfθh(E1)dE1p∫0cfθh(E1)dE1+(1−p)(∫0cfθl(E1)dE1+∫c1fθl(E1)qE1dE1)andP2(θh|Rl)=p∫01−cfθh(E2)dE2p∫01−cfθh(E2)dE2+(1−p)(∫01−cfθl(E1)dE1+∫1−c1fθl(E2)qE2dE2). 12 I assume that the learning cost in the second period is sunk also with a minimum audit effort, qt=0, in period one. For example, the parties are already familiar with each other because of the fee negotiation process. The results do not depend on the extent of learning (see Section 3.3 for details).13 An implicit assumption in this section is that the incumbent auditor is rehired in period two. In Section 3.3, I show that this is optimal in equilibrium.14 The expected audit quality expressed as the frequency of modified audit opinions is discussed in Section 4.15 The firm re-hires the incumbent regardless of the occurrence of accounting mistakes. The realization of payoffs and uncovering of mistakes occur after period two. However, even when considering the realization, the incumbent still provides a higher net value to the firm because all auditors act to the best of their knowledge (they report truthfully) and differences exist only because of learning cost. Supporting these simplifications, Hennes et al. (Citation2014) find that clients retain auditors after restatements, especially when switching cost is high. In their sample, auditor turnover after a restatement is only 16.2% and the dismissals initiated by the client account for only 10.7% of all restatement cases. Thus, it is a common practice to retain the auditor, even after restatements.16 I assume that the firm remains with the incumbent auditor in case of indifference.17 Full expressions are in the Appendix, Proof of Proposition 1.18 M. DeFond and Zhang (Citation2014) provide an overview of studies that use FMAO or Going-Concern Opinions, which is the only type of modified opinion in SEC-filings, as a proxy for audit quality in Table 3. This measure is particularly useful in my study because the literature indicates that a higher FMAO captures auditor independence (M. DeFond & Zhang, Citation2014, p. 2879). A direct measure of audit quality is the conditional probability P1(Rl|Sh), which requires information on the audit process itself, for example, the audit hours.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by Austrian Science Fund [W 1229].","PeriodicalId":11764,"journal":{"name":"European Accounting Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"European Accounting Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09638180.2023.2270002","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"BUSINESS, FINANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

Abstract

AbstractThis study examines the impact of the interaction between firms' accounting choices and auditors' audit effort choices on audit pricing. In a multi-period model, I focus on a central feature of accounting: reversing accruals. I find that initial low-balling, defined as lower audit fees than audit costs, arises independently from the direction of accruals, but increases with more conservatism in the first engagement period. The reason is that a conservative accruals strategy implies understated earnings today and overstated earnings in the future, which creates a higher investor demand for auditing services in future periods. The incumbent auditor can satisfy this future demand better than any competitor, because the first-period learning cost is sunk. Thus, conservatism enhances the competitive advantage of the incumbent and increases the future quasi-rent, which is used for a higher initial low-balling discount. I further show implications of the auditor-firm interaction for fee-cutting, a common proxy for low-balling, and the frequency of modified audit opinions, a common proxy for audit quality. Thus, my model provides a theoretical foundation for the connection between high low-balling discounts, accounting accruals, and audit quality.Keywords: Low-ballingFee-cuttingAudit qualityAccounting accruals AcknowledgmentsAccepted by Robert F. Göx. I thank Christopher Bleibtreu, Ralf Ewert, Qi Gao, Yasmin Hoffmann, Bill Kinney, Thomas Kourouxous, Sandra K. Kronenberger, Peter Krenn, Volker Laux, Paul Newman, Elisabeth Plietzsch, Stefan Schantl, Thomas Simon, Dirk Simons, Alfred Wagenhofer, Anna Waldner, and participants of the 12th Workshop on Accounting and Economics in Tilburg, the 39th EAA Annual Congress in Maastricht, the 83th VHB Annual Congress, the 12th EARNet Symposium Komma and seminar participants at the University of Magdeburg for helpful comments. I acknowledge funding from the Austrian Science Fond (FWF), Project W 1229.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Over the total time period, the auditor never earns rent because it is used to attract the engagement in the first period. Therefore, it is called quasi-rent.2 See also Kanodia and Mukherji (Citation1994), Lee and Gu (Citation1998), Chan (Citation1999), Zhang (Citation1999), and Simons (Citation2011).3 See also Göx and Wagenhofer (Citation2009, Citation2010), Nan and Wen (Citation2014), and Caskey and Laux (Citation2017).4 Further studies include Gul et al. (Citation2009), Ghosh and Lustgarten (Citation2006) and Ettredge and Greenberg (Citation1990).5 In addition, Barua et al. (Citation2020) provide evidence that audit fee studies are often subject to a systematic bias because only the succeeding auditor's fee must be mandatorily disclosed. The study shows that the fee discount often disappears after adjusting for the bias.6 To economize on notation, I drop the time index on the economic state, the accounting signal, and the audit opinion. Thus, θt,h=θh and θt,l=θl, St,h=Sh and St,l=Sl, Rt,h=Rh and Rt,l=Rl.7 The owner-manager already designed the distributions in the most favorable manner and they cannot be improved further.8 As I discuss in Section 5, as long as the lenders and auditors rationally anticipate the reporting incentives, and there is a variation between periods, the results of the paper hold. This includes settings, in which the owner-manager chooses accruals in each period.9 Figure 2 uses symmetric distributions along c = 0.5 for the interval Et∈[0,1], fθh(Et)=1−(1−Et)2 and fθl(Et)=1−Et2. A neutral accounting system aligns economic and accounting income. In an asymmetric distribution, where probability mass of fθh(Et) shifts to the left but still fulfills all assumptions stated above, a neutral accounting system would imply overstated accounting income relative to the economic income.10 This aspect of the assumption is not critical to the model results. Variable start-up cost could also decrease with more audit effort; for example, when an audit team member becomes faster every day, with more repetitions of the same task. As demonstrated in Section 3.3, the results of the study hold as long as the incumbent has a competitive advantage over the audit competitor, which is connected to the audit quality in period two.11 P1(θh|Rl)=p∫0cfθh(E1)dE1p∫0cfθh(E1)dE1+(1−p)(∫0cfθl(E1)dE1+∫c1fθl(E1)qE1dE1)andP2(θh|Rl)=p∫01−cfθh(E2)dE2p∫01−cfθh(E2)dE2+(1−p)(∫01−cfθl(E1)dE1+∫1−c1fθl(E2)qE2dE2). 12 I assume that the learning cost in the second period is sunk also with a minimum audit effort, qt=0, in period one. For example, the parties are already familiar with each other because of the fee negotiation process. The results do not depend on the extent of learning (see Section 3.3 for details).13 An implicit assumption in this section is that the incumbent auditor is rehired in period two. In Section 3.3, I show that this is optimal in equilibrium.14 The expected audit quality expressed as the frequency of modified audit opinions is discussed in Section 4.15 The firm re-hires the incumbent regardless of the occurrence of accounting mistakes. The realization of payoffs and uncovering of mistakes occur after period two. However, even when considering the realization, the incumbent still provides a higher net value to the firm because all auditors act to the best of their knowledge (they report truthfully) and differences exist only because of learning cost. Supporting these simplifications, Hennes et al. (Citation2014) find that clients retain auditors after restatements, especially when switching cost is high. In their sample, auditor turnover after a restatement is only 16.2% and the dismissals initiated by the client account for only 10.7% of all restatement cases. Thus, it is a common practice to retain the auditor, even after restatements.16 I assume that the firm remains with the incumbent auditor in case of indifference.17 Full expressions are in the Appendix, Proof of Proposition 1.18 M. DeFond and Zhang (Citation2014) provide an overview of studies that use FMAO or Going-Concern Opinions, which is the only type of modified opinion in SEC-filings, as a proxy for audit quality in Table 3. This measure is particularly useful in my study because the literature indicates that a higher FMAO captures auditor independence (M. DeFond & Zhang, Citation2014, p. 2879). A direct measure of audit quality is the conditional probability P1(Rl|Sh), which requires information on the audit process itself, for example, the audit hours.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by Austrian Science Fund [W 1229].
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应计会计、审计质量和审计定价
摘要本研究考察了会计师事务所会计选择与审计师审计努力选择之间的交互作用对审计定价的影响。在多期模型中,我关注会计的一个核心特征:应计项目的反转。我发现,最初的低摊付(定义为审计费用低于审计成本)独立于应计项目的方向产生,但在第一个审计业务期间随着更保守性的增加而增加。原因是,保守的应计收益策略意味着低估了今天的收益,高估了未来的收益,这使得投资者对未来期间的审计服务产生了更高的需求。现任审计师比任何竞争对手都能更好地满足这一未来需求,因为第一阶段的学习成本是沉没的。因此,保守性增强了现任者的竞争优势,并增加了未来的准租金,用于更高的初始低价折扣。我进一步展示了审计公司之间的互动对削减费用的影响,这是低报价的常见代表,以及修改审计意见的频率,这是审计质量的常见代表。因此,我的模型为高、低摊销折扣、会计应计项目和审计质量之间的联系提供了理论基础。关键词:低瞒报费用;审计质量;会计应计项目;我要感谢Christopher Bleibtreu、Ralf Ewert、Qi Gao、Yasmin Hoffmann、Bill Kinney、Thomas Kourouxous、Sandra K. Kronenberger、Peter Krenn、Volker Laux、Paul Newman、Elisabeth Plietzsch、Stefan Schantl、Thomas Simon、Dirk Simons、Alfred Wagenhofer、Anna Waldner以及参加第12届蒂尔堡会计与经济学研讨会、第39届EAA年会、第83届VHB年会的与会者。第12届EARNet专题讨论会Komma和在马格德堡大学的研讨会参与者进行有益的评论。我感谢奥地利科学基金会(FWF) w1229项目的资助。披露声明作者未报告潜在的利益冲突。注1在整个期间内,注册会计师从未赚取租金,因为租金在第一期用于吸引审计业务。因此称为准租参见Kanodia和Mukherji (Citation1994)、Lee和Gu (Citation1998)、Chan (Citation1999)、Zhang (Citation1999)和Simons (Citation2011)参见Göx and Wagenhofer (Citation2009, Citation2010), Nan and Wen (Citation2014), Caskey and Laux (Citation2017)进一步的研究包括Gul et al. (Citation2009), Ghosh and Lustgarten (Citation2006), Ettredge and Greenberg (Citation1990)此外,Barua等人(Citation2020)提供的证据表明,审计费用研究往往受到系统性偏见的影响,因为只有后续审计师的费用必须被强制披露。研究表明,在调整了偏差后,费用折扣往往会消失为了节省符号,我在经济状况、会计信号和审计意见上省略了时间指标。因此,θt,h=θh, θt,l=θl, St,h=Sh, St,l=Sl, Rt,h=Rh, Rt,l= rl业主经理已经以最有利的方式设计了分配,不能再改进了正如我在第5节中讨论的那样,只要贷款人和审计师理性地预测报告激励,并且在不同时期之间存在差异,本文的结果就成立。这包括业主经理在每个期间选择应计项目的设置对于区间Et∈[0,1],fθh(Et)=1−(1−Et)2和fθl(Et)=1−Et2,图2使用沿c = 0.5的对称分布。一个中立的会计制度使经济收入和会计收入保持一致。在不对称分布中,fθh(Et)的概率质量向左移动,但仍然满足上述所有假设,中性会计系统将意味着相对于经济收入高估会计收入假设的这一方面对模型结果并不重要。可变启动成本也可以随着审计工作的增加而减少;例如,当审计团队成员每天都变得更快时,同一任务的重复次数就会更多。如第3.3节所示,只要在职者对审计竞争对手具有竞争优势,研究结果就成立,这与第二阶段的审计质量有关P1(θh | Rl) = p∫0 cfθh (E1) dE1p∫0 h (E1) dE1 + cfθ(1−p)(∫0 l (E1) dE1 + cfθ∫c1fθl (E1) qE1dE1) andP2(θh | Rl) = p∫01−cfθh (E2) dE2p∫01−cfθh (E2)德+(1−p)(∫01−cfθl (E1) dE1 +∫1−c1fθl (E2) qE2dE2)。我假设第二阶段的学习成本在第一阶段也以最小的审计工作量(qt=0)沉没。例如,由于费用谈判过程,双方已经彼此熟悉。结果不取决于学习的程度(详见3.3节)本节的一个隐含假设是,现任审计员在第二期被重新雇用。在第3.3节中,我表明这是最优的平衡。 以修改审计意见的频率表示的预期审计质量在第4.15节中进行了讨论。无论是否发生会计错误,事务所都会重新雇用在职人员。收益的实现和错误的发现发生在第二阶段之后。然而,即使考虑到实现,在职者仍然为公司提供更高的净值,因为所有审计师都尽其所知行事(他们如实报告),而差异的存在仅仅是因为学习成本。Hennes等人(Citation2014)支持这些简化,发现客户在重述后保留审计师,特别是在转换成本很高的情况下。在他们的样本中,重述后的审计师流失率仅为16.2%,由客户发起的解雇仅占所有重述案件的10.7%。因此,即使在重述之后,保留审计师也是一种常见的做法我假定该公司仍与现任审计员在一起,以防冷漠完整表述见附录,命题1.18的证明M. DeFond和Zhang (Citation2014)概述了使用FMAO或持续经营意见(这是sec备案文件中唯一一种修改意见)作为审计质量代理的研究,见表3。这一措施在我的研究中特别有用,因为文献表明,较高的FMAO可以捕获审计师的独立性(M. DeFond & Zhang, Citation2014, p. 2879)。审计质量的一个直接度量是条件概率P1(Rl|Sh),它需要审计过程本身的信息,例如审计小时数。本研究得到奥地利科学基金[W 1229]的支持。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
European Accounting Review
European Accounting Review BUSINESS, FINANCE-
CiteScore
7.00
自引率
6.10%
发文量
58
期刊介绍: Devoted to the advancement of accounting knowledge, it provides a forum for the publication of high quality accounting research manuscripts. The journal acknowledges its European origins and the distinctive variety of the European accounting research community. Conscious of these origins, European Accounting Review emphasises openness and flexibility, not only regarding the substantive issues of accounting research, but also with respect to paradigms, methodologies and styles of conducting that research. Though European Accounting Review is a truly international journal, it also holds a unique position as it is the only accounting journal to provide a European forum for the reporting of accounting research.
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