企业社会地位会影响审计费用吗？

Does Corporate Social Status Affect Audit Fees?

中文关键词:  企业社会地位  审计费用  经营风险  盈余质量  审计投入

英文关键词:corporate social status  audit fee  operation risk  earnings quality  audit input

中文摘要:

      社会地位会影响企业决策以及外部利益相关者的评价,进而影响审计费用。以我国沪深A股2008—2019年上市公司数据为样本,基于企业社会属性的视角,考察了社会地位对审计费用的影响及其机理。研究发现,企业较高的社会地位能够显著降低审计费用。作用机制表明,社会地位通过降低企业经营风险、提高盈余质量、减少审计师审计投入,降低审计费用。异质性分析发现, 当企业为轻资产结构及处于高市场竞争行业时,审计师为非“国际四大”事务所及位于高市场化程度地区时,社会地位降低审计费用的效应更显著。 因此,企业可以通过长期努力提升社会地位以形成与审计师的良性互动,从而降低审计费用；审计师在业务承接、审计实施等环节可以合理利用客户社会地位等非财务信息进行决策,以提高审计效率,降低审计风险。

英文摘要:

      Social status will affect the enterprise decision-making and external stakeholders' evaluation, which then affect the audit fee. Taking the data of A-share listed companies in China's Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange during the years from 2008 to 2019 as samples, based on the perspective that enterprises have social attributes, this paper examines the influence of social status on audit fees and its mechanism. The research finds that the higher social status can reduce audit fees significantly. The influence mechanism shows that social status will reduce the audit fees by reducing the business risk, improving the quality of earnings and reducing the audit input. The analysis on heterogeneity indicates that the effect of social status reduces audit fee is more significant under the following situations:the corporate is in the industry with light assets structure and high market competition, and the auditor is not the big four firms and located in the region with high degree of marketization. Therefore, enterprises can make long-term efforts to improve their social status so as to form a benign interaction with auditors and thereby reduce the audit fees. During business undertaking and audit implementation, auditors can make reasonable use of non-financial information such as customers' social status to improve audit efficiency and reduce audit risks. 