与客户共享审计师会影响供应商的关系专用性投资吗?

Does Sharing Auditor Impact Suppliers’ Relationship-specific Investment?

供应链关系专用性投资存在套牢问题,信息不对称的存在将加剧关系专用性投资的套牢问题,因此降低供应商与客户之间的信息不对称程度将有效促进关系专用性投资。本文验证了共享审计师这一信息中介的作用,以2009—2015年上市公司为样本,研究发现,与客户共享审计师促进了供应商关系专用性投资,且增加会计信息可比性、提升信任和传递软信息都是共享审计师促进关系专用性投资的路径。进一步分析结果表明,在客户行业集中度更高和供应商融资约束程度更高的情况下,与客户共享审计师对供应商关系专用性投资的促进作用更强。

Relationship-specific investment of suppliers may be faced with held-up problem, which means relationship-specific assets should be under-invested if suppliers are not properly encouraged. Information asymmetry will aggravate this problem. Therefore reducing the degree of information asymmetry between suppliers and customers will effectively promote the relationship-specific investment. This paper takes firms listed in China’s capital market from 2009 to 2015 as sample, examines the role of the auditor as an information intermediary and finds that sharing auditor with customers will increase relationship-specific investment, and when customer and supplier have less accounting comparability, customers are less trusted by suppliers and auditor has higher ability to gather or communicate soft information, the information intermediary role of auditor in promoting suppliers’ specific investment is more significant. Further results show that the role of shared auditor in promotion of relation-specific investment is more significant in firms with more competitive customers and more serious financial constraints.