客户集中度与审计费用:客户风险抑或供应链整合

Customer Concentration and Audit Fee: Customer Risk or Integration

客户是企业经济利益的来源并能对企业经济活动产生重要影响,因而可能对审计费用产生影响。利用手工收集的2007—2011年制造业上市公司数据,研究了被审计企业客户特征对审计费用的影响及其作用机理。研究表明,客户集中度越高,审计费用越低。进一步分析表明,大客户的存在在我国被认为有利于供应链整合,向市场传递了有利的信号,而且企业运营效率与公司治理效率越高、企业法律风险越低以及会计师事务所规模越小,大客户的信号作用越强,对审计费用的降低效应越强。研究结果扩充了审计收费影响因素与客户特征经济后果文献,对我国当前审计收费制度改进也具有借鉴价值。

As the main source of a company＇ s economic benefits, customers can influence its suppliers operating activities significantly, and further have an effect on suppliers＇ audit fees. Using hand collected data of China listed companies in manufacturing industries during the period 2007-2011, this paper firstly attempts to explore whether and how a supplier＇ s customer characteristics affect the supplier＇ s own audit fee. The results show that the higher the customer concentration, the less the supplier＇ s audit fee, that is, customer concentration is negatively related with its supplier＇ s audit fee. The evidence indicates that the existence of big customers is a good thing to the company, which can benefit the process of industrial integration. Further, we find that the company＇ s more efficient operating activities and internal control, lower customer and legal risk, as well as smaller audit firms can enhance the industrial integration effect of big customers to a larger extent, and thus more powerfully reduce the company＇ s audit fee. Exploring the impact of supplier＇ s customer characteristics on the supplier＇ s own audit fee based on a new perspective of supplier-customer relationship, this paper both enriches literatures on determinants of companies＇ audit fees and expands researches on economic consequences of customer characteristics. Besides, our results also have reference value for policy makers and contribut to the improvement of current audit fee system.