审计师任期、事务所任期与审计独立性

Audit Partner Tenure,Audit Firm Tenure and Audit Independence

本文以中国证券市场上2000年至2002年的上市公司为样本,以发表非标准无保留审计意见的可能性作为审计独立性的代理变量,考察了审计师任期、事务所任期与审计独立性的关系。在控制了其他变量的影响后,研究发现审计师任期延长并没有损害审计独立性,只有过长的事务所任期才会伤害到审计独立性,而且这种负面影响只存在于非十大会计师事务所中。进一步分析表明,事务所任期是否超过5年也是影响审计独立性的分水岭。

Using the data of listed companies during 2000 to 2002 in China＇s securities market,and taking propensity to issue modified opinion as the proxy variable for audit independence,this paper investigates the relationship between audit partner,audit firm tenure and audit independence.We find that,after controlling the influence of other variables,audit partner tenure has no harm to audit independence,only the longer audit firm tenure will harm audit independence,and the negative impact mainly comes from nonBig 10 audit firms.Further analysis finds that five-year tenure of audit firm is the cut-off level of audit independence.