企业风险与审计师选择

Enterprise's Risk and Auditor's Choice

信号传递理论认为,IPO市场中审计师选择可以作为信号机制,降低发行企业和投资者之间的信息不对称程度。本文以股权分置改革后我国证券发行制度向市场化过渡为背景,考察我国审计师声誉和IPO企业特征之间的关系。研究结果表明,在公司规模、资产负债率、资产净利率、投资银行声誉、公司成立时间这五个反映公司风险的变量中,公司规模、投资银行声誉、公司成立时间与是否选择大事务所进行审计有显著正相关关系,且大规模事务所审计的IPO企业的首日回报显著要低,这意味着大规模事务所的高声誉得到了市场的认可,审计师的信号传递功能在我国初步有效。

Signaling theory suggests that,in the IPO market,the auditor choice can be used as a signaling mechanism to reduce information asymmetries between the issuing companies and investors.Under the background of China＇s split share structure reform having been completed and China＇s securities issuing system transition to market-oriented,we examined the relationship between the IPO firm characteristics and auditor reputation.The results show that of the five variables indicating company＇s risk,three variables including company＇s size,investment banks reputation,the duration of company＇s establishment to its IPO,investment bank reputation have significant positive relationship with choosing of big four audit firms.Furthermore,clients that hire ＂big four＂ exhibit lower initial returns than clients that choose to hire other audit firms,which means big four＇s high reputation have been recognized by the market.These results indicate that the signal transmission function of an auditor begun to be valid in our country.