监督者声誉提升机制的治理效应研究——来自签字审计师声誉提升的经验证据

The Effect of Reputation Improvement of Supervisors on Corporate Governance——Evidence from Signing Auditors’Reputation Promotion

利用中国注册会计师协会评审"资深注册会计师"引发的签字审计师声誉变动事件,本文发现,作为财务报告生成和披露的重要监督者,签字审计师获得"资深注册会计师"荣誉后,更可能出具非标准审计意见,被监督公司盈余质量显著提高、发生财务违规或重述的概率显著降低,该声誉提升带来的治理效应符合成本效益原则,且在制度环境较好地区更加显著。这些结果表明,声誉提升机制在转轨经济市场审计监督治理中扮演的主导角色是"激励"而非"寻租"。

Based on the event of signing auditors’ reputation promotion, we investigate the economic consequences of the improvement in reputation of external supervisors in the capital market. Results show that when an auditor is granted with the title "Senior Auditor", he or she is more likely to issue modified audit opinions, and illegal activities related to accounting within supervised companies decrease significantly, supervised companies’ accruals quality improves significantly, and this effect brought by signing auditor reputation promotion accords with cost-benefit principle. Further analyses show that the effect of reputation promotion mechanism on audit supervision is more pronounced when the client firms are in locations with a better institutional environment. These results show that the leading role of reputation promotion mechanism in the governance of auditing supervision in transitional economic market is "incentive" rather than "rent-seeking".