事务所审计任期会影响审计质量吗?——来自发布补充更正公告的上市公司的经验证据

Does Auditor Tenure Affect Audit Quality?——Empirical Evidence from Chinese Companies that Release Financial Restatements

本文以中国A股市场上针对2003年至2009年年报发布过补充更正公告的上市公司为研究样本,对事务所任期与审计质量之间的关系进行了重新讨论。与现有文献不同,我们在讨论中引入了审计风险的概念。我们发现,虽然从整体上看,事务所任期越长,审计质量越差。但是,进一步的分析发现,这一现象仅仅存在于涉及到的审计风险相对较低的上市公司中,而对于补充更正内容涉及到的审计风险相对较高的上市公司来说,事务所审计任期对审计质量并没有产生显著影响。我们的分析结果表明,事务所任期对审计质量的影响是有限的。在较高的审计风险水平下,事务所不会因为任期较长而丧失审计独立性。

Using a sample of Chinese listed companies who restate their financial reports in 2003 to 2009,we discuss the relationship between audit firm tenure and audit quality.Unlike extant literature,we introduce the concept of audit risk in the discussion.We find that audit quality deteriorates with the increase of auditor tenure at first glance.However,further analysis shows that this result only exists in companies whose restatements affect net earnings,which is defined as lower audit risk in this paper.For companies whose restatements have nothing to do with net earnings,audit quality is not affected by auditor tenure.Our results indicate that the influence of auditor tenure on audit quality is limited.Auditors will not lose independence because of longer auditor tenure in case of higher audit risks.