规模与审计质量:店大欺客与客大欺店?——基于香港市场大陆上市公司的经验数据

Auditors Size, Clients Size and Auditing Quality——Empirical evidence on cross-listed mainland companies in HKSE

本文以大陆在香港上市的三组公司(H股、红筹股和民营股)为依据,研究会计师事务所规模与审计质量(店大欺客)、客户规模与审计质量(客大欺店)等的关系。我们的研究倾向于支持"店大欺客"假设:大规模会计师事务所并没有提供明显高质量的审计,但却收取了相对较高的审计费用;本文的经验证据不支持"客大欺店",即:规模大、审计收费高的客户,并没有迫使审计师在质量方面做出让步。我们的研究丰富了对审计师选择以及规模与审计质量的关系认识。

When mainland companies cross-listed in HKSE, they are classified into three groups, saying H share, red-chips share and P chips respectively. Using such a unique set of data, we analyze the inter-dependence of auditors size, clients size and auditing quality. Our empirical evidence tends to support that auditors size itself may cost clients more auditing fee but not with higher quality. On the other hand, clients size does not cast negative impact on auditors independence. Our research supplement the firm size and auditing quality literatures by cross-examining auditors size, clients size and their influence on auditors independence simultaneously.