دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی رابطه بین کاهش هزینه حسابرسی در بحران مالی و کیفیت درآمد و کیفیت حسابرسی - الزویر 2018

ABSTRACT

The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) presents a unique opportunity to study how auditors respond to an exogenous shock to the clients' operating environment. Also, due to the GFC, auditors were under pressure from clients to cut audit fees during the crisis. Regulators were concerned that lower audit fees could result in lower audit effort, and more importantly, impair audit quality. We conduct a comprehensive analysis of multiple attributes of client firms' earnings quality and audit quality. Collectively, our findings indicate that there is no significant difference in earnings quality between client firms that received a fee cut during the GFC and control firms consisting of firms that did not receive a fee cut and firms that received a fee cut before the GFC. Further, there is no significant difference in the likelihood of a going concern opinion or a financial restatement, our proxies for audit quality, between client firms that received a fee cut during the GFC and control firms. Our findings contribute to understanding the role of auditors during the GFC.

8. Conclusion

During the recent Global Financial Crisis, auditors were under pressure from clients and audit committees to cut audit fees during the crisis. Since audit fees proxy for audit effort, regulators were concerned that lower audit fees during the crisis could result in lower audit effort, and more importantly, impaired audit quality. Did financial reporting quality and audit quality suffer as a result of the widespread and significant fee cuts? We conduct a comprehensive analysis of multiple attributes of client firms' earnings quality and audit quality. Collectively, our findings indicate that there is no significant difference in earnings quality between client firms that received a fee cut during the crisis and those that did not or those that received a fee cut prior to the crisis. Further, our results do not indicate that firms receiving a cut in audit fees during the crisis are less likely to receive a going concern opinion than firms in the control group. We also find that in general, the likelihood of a financial restatement is not significantly different between firms that received a fee cut during the crisis and the control firms.

One possible explanation for our results is that auditors responded to the increased risks arising from the crisis in several ways: issued technical guidance to staff, provided additional training, developed new audit tools, required additional audit procedures, and increased supervision of engagement personnel (PCAOB, 2010). Our findings are also consistent with findings in Krishnan and Zhang (Krishnan & Zhang, 2013), who examine the relation between audit fee cuts and the financial reporting quality of banks and conclude that Big 4 auditors constrained earnings management via loan loss provisions in banks that received cuts in audit fees.