启动成本与跨期审计质量——来自中国激烈竞争审计市场的经验证据  

Start-up Costs and Intertemporal Audit Quality:Evidence from the Highly Competitive Audit Market in China

作　　者：刘浩[1] 李雪婷 李璇 HAo LIU;XUETING LI;XUAN LI

机构地区：[1]上海财经大学会计与财务研究院 [2]上海财经大学会计学院 [3]上海申银万国证券研究所有限公司

出　　处：《中国会计评论》2023年第4期769-824,共56页China Accounting Review

基　　金：国家自然科学基金(72072106,72272093);教育部重点研究基地重大项目(22JJD790093);高等学校学科创新引智计划(B18033);上海财经大学创新团队支持计划的阶段性研究成果

摘　　要：早期基于西方审计市场的理论研究认为,由于客户换所成本高昂,启动成本并不会对审计质量造成影响。本文认为,中国审计市场的激烈竞争使得会计师事务所承接客户的启动成本可能对后续年审质量产生重要影响。一方面,激烈竞争使得会计师事务所收费较低,启动成本需要在较长的审计任期中实现回收;另一方面,激烈竞争使得客户换所威胁的可置信度提高,增加了延续审计任期和回收启动成本的难度。上述两个方面使得会计师事务所在启动成本相对较高的情况下,更可能牺牲后续年审质量来维系审计合约。本文创新性地将同一家会计师事务所的全部上市公司客户划分为首发客户与换入客户(在控制事务所能力的同时区分启动成本),利用2005-2018年A股上市公司数据,研究发现:(1)相比于换入客户,启动成本较高的首发客户的后续年审质量较低;(2)随着审计市场竞争加剧,两类客户后续年审质量的差异进一步增大;(3)在首发客户和换入客户各自的子样本中,同样存在前述负相关关系——无论是审计风险还是审计投入带来的启动成本增加均对审计质量产生负面影响。本文从会计师事务所角度,基于高度竞争的中国审计市场建立启动成本对后续审计质量产生影响的理论逻辑并进行实证检验,有助于相关机构加强审计监管和促进人们对中国审计市场的基础性理解。Early studies based on the western audit market held that due to the high costs of changing audit firms,start-up costs had no impact on audit quality.This paper argues that the fierce competition in China's audit market makes the start-up costs have an important impact on audit quality of subsequent periods:On the one hand,the fierce competition makes the start-up costs need to be covered by audit fees in a long audit tenure due to the low audit fees.On the other hand,the fierce competition also increases the confidence of clients threat to switch auditors,which increases the difficulty of extending the audit tenure and covering the start-up costs.The above two aspects make the accounting firms more likely to sacrifice audit quality in subsequent tenure to maintain audit contract when the start-up costs are high.In this paper,all clients of the same accounting firm are divided into IPO clients and switch-in clients(controlling audit capability).Using A-share listed companies'data from 2005 to 2018,we find that:(1)Compared with switch-in clients,the subsequent audit quality of IPO clients which have higher start-up costs is lower.(2)With the intensified competition in the audit market,the difference in audit quality of the two types of clients increases.(3)There is also a negative correlation between start-up costs and audit quality in the sub-sample of IPO clients and switch-in clients.The increase of start-up costs brought by audit input or audit risk has a negative impact on audit quality.From the perspective of audit firms,based on the highly competitive audit market in China,this paper establishes the theoretical logic of the impact of start-up costs on audit quality and conducts an empirical test,which is helpful to strengthen audit supervision and promote the basic understanding of the China's audit market.

关 键 词：审计市场竞争 审计质量 跨期影响 启动成本 

分 类 号：F239.4[经济管理—会计学] F832.51[经济管理—国民经济] F275.3