企业集团统一审计与审计质量

Does Hiring the Same Auditor in a Corporation Group Impair Auditor Independence?

企业集团是新兴市场国家非常普遍的企业组织方式。审计质量问题研究的已有文献通常关注的是单个公司,本文则关注在同一实际控制人控制下的企业集团中,多家上市公司选择同一家会计师事务所审计,即集团统一审计是否会影响审计质量。研究发现,较小规模事务所进行的集团统一审计,其审计质量更差;而较大规模事务所进行的集团统一审计,则未发现其对审计质量产生显著影响。

Business groups are ubiquitous in emerging markets.The conventional wisdom in the literature studying audit issues normally focuses on the single public company.However the majority shareholder might have incentive to control the decision of public companies in the business group.We pay more attention to these public companies in a business group employing the same auditors.We find evidence that hiring the same auditor in a business group would impair auditor independence.In addition,our findings are robust to controlling for unexpected audit fees.Moreover,hiring a Top 10 auditor to audit the public companies in a business group does not impair audit quality.But,auditor independence would be compromised by employing a small auditor.