强制审计师任命与审计质量关系:基于国资委统一选聘的证据

The Effect of Mandatory Auditor Assignment on Audit Quality:Evidence from SASAC

为履行中中央企业业出资人职责,国资委自2004年开始陆续出台了一系列规定,要求对所属中央企业实行统一选聘会计师事务所制度,这改变了长期以来由企业管理层实质控制审计师雇佣和解聘的局面。本文以2004～2008年按规定变更事务所的中央企业上市公司为研究对象,采用操控性应计利润和线下项目衡量审计质量。研究发现,与变更前相比,国资委选聘的会计师事务所的收入规模更大、CPA人数更多、事务所的排名更靠前。但是,变更审计师后上市公司的审计质量没有显著提高,与未变更审计师的中央企业上市公司配对检验也没有发现两者存在显著差异。研究表明,由国资委选聘审计师并未对上市公司的审计质量产生实质性影响。这一结论与DeFondetal.(2000)的研究相一致,表明,政府监管机构选聘审计师尽管可以改变管理层对审计师的影响,但无法产生由市场自发形成的对高质量审计需求的效果。

As the major investor of national enterprises, SASAC has adopted a series of rules, under these rules, SASAC mandatorily assigns auditors to national enterprises it controls, and these rules transfer the power to hire and fire auditors from managers to SASAC. This paper investigates national enterprises that switched audit firms as SASAC regulated in the period between 2004 and 2008, and uses discretionary accruals and noncore operating income as proxies for audit quality. The results suggest that the mandatorily assigned audit firms have significantly larger revenue,more CPA and higher ranks than freely selected audit firms,however,the Multivariate linear regression finds that the audit quality under the new audit firms isn＇t significantly higher than the audit quality of these same companies one year earlier under the old audit firms, Further, the matched sample T test shows that there is no significant difference in audit quality between in the first year with the successor auditor and the last year with the predecessor auditor.