异常审计费用与商誉审计稳健性  

Abnormal Audit Fees and Conservatism in Goodwill Auditing

作　　者：金献坤 徐莉萍[1] 辛宇[1] JIN Xiankun;XU Liping;XIN Yu(School of Business, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China)

机构地区：[1]中山大学管理学院,广东广州510275

出　　处：《审计与经济研究》2020年第6期51-62,共12页Journal of Audit & Economics

基　　金：国家自然科学基金重大项目(71790603);国家自然科学基金面上项目(71772188);国家自然科学基金面上项目(71672198)。

摘　　要：审计师要求公司及时、充分地确认商誉减值的稳健行为(商誉审计稳健性),这有助于提高公司商誉信息的透明度。从审计行为的经济动因出发,研究了异常审计费用对商誉审计稳健性的影响。研究发现:(1)随着异常审计费用的增加,审计师在商誉审计中表现得更加稳健;(2)异常审计费用对商誉审计稳健性的正向影响在异常审计费用为正时更加明显,并且不能由审计师议价能力所解释。机制分析表明,异常审计费用抑制了公司的盈余管理活动,从而促使公司及时、充分地确认商誉减值。研究还发现正常审计费用对商誉审计稳健性也存在正向影响,审计费用整体上与商誉审计稳健性正相关。总体来看,研究结果支持审计费用的“成本观”。较高的审计收费能够促使会计师事务所提高审计投入,这有助于其识别并抑制公司规避商誉减值的行为,进而提供更为稳健的审计结果。Conservatism in goodwill auditing(CGA hereafter),manifested in pushing firms to record goodwill impairment in a timely and accurate manner,helps to improve the transparency of firms'goodwill information.From the prospective of economic driver of auditing behaviors,this paper investigates how abnormal audit fees(AAFs hereafter)affect CGA.Our results show that:(1)With the increase of AAFs,auditors exhibit greater auditor conservatism;(2)The positive associations between AAFs and auditor conservatism are stronger when AAFs are positive and couldn't be explained by auditors'bargaining power.The channel analysis shows that AAFs can restrain firms'earnings management activities,which further push them to record goodwill impairment timely and accurately.Lastly,we find that normal audit fees also improve CGA,and total audit fees are positively related to CGA.Overall,our findings support the cost view of audit fees.Abnormally high audit fees can encourage accounting firms to devote more audit efforts,which in turn helps them identify and restrain firms'impairment avoidance,and then provide more conservative audit reports.

关 键 词：异常审计费用 商誉减值 审计师稳健性 盈余管理 成本观 正常审计费用 审计投入 

分 类 号：F239.43[经济管理—会计学]