非审计服务、审计师独立性及其经济后果:述评与展望

Non-audit Services,Auditor Independence and its Economic Consequences: Review and Prospect

针对审计师应否向审计客户提供非审计服务这一热门话题,本文以“提供非审计服务是否影响审计师独立性、进而产生不同经济后果”为主线,以国内外已有文献及制度背景为基础,对有关非审计服务、审计师独立性的前因后果进行述评。结果发现,向客户提供非审计服务并不必然损害审计师独立性;非审计服务费与客户公司的审计质量、盈余质量及资产定价之间也并非线性相关,而是条件依存于法制环境、审计市场竞争、审计特征及客户公司治理等因素。基于此,本文结合现有文献的研究局限与中国当前非审计业务实践,提出了未来可以改进的方向及若干研究话题,以期为学术界开展实证研究提供选题思路,也为上市公司提高会计信息质量、降低融资成本提供决策参考。

Whether the auditor should provide audit clients with non-audit services to be a hot topic.This paper reviews the cause and effect about non-audit services,auditor independence according to the main line“non-audit services will affect auditor independence,which led to different economic consequences”and domestic and international literatures and institutional background.It finds that providing non-audit services to clients does not necessarily harm the independence of the auditor.The correlations between non-audit fees and client companies audit quality,earnings quality or asset pricing are all nonlinear,and they depend on the legal environment,audit market competition,the audit client characteristics and corporate governance.In line with the disadvantages of the prior literature and China s current non-audit business practices,this paper proposes several topics that could be improved in the future direction.Basing on these,we hope to provide academic ideas for empirical research and improve the quality of accounting information,and to reduce financing costs of listed companies.