内部人减持对年报审计费用的影响研究

Research on the Impact of Insider Reduction on Annual Report Audit Expenses

近年来,上市公司内部人通过操纵股票价格非法减持来谋取超额收益的现象受到了市场和审计机构的共同关注。基于这一背景,文章选取了2007~2020年我国A股上市公司作为研究样本,考察了内部人减持行为对年报审计费用的影响。研究发现:随着上市公司内部人减持比例的增加,审计机构收取的年报审计费用也随之增加,这一效应既表现在大股东的减持行为中,也表现在董监高的减持行为中。机制检验发现,内部人减持行为主要是通过增加审计风险来增加年报审计费用的。进一步分析表明,在民营上市公司、大规模减持中,内部人减持对审计费用的影响更显著。研究扩展了内部人减持的经济后果研究,并对我国上市公司优化减持决策、审计师制定定价决策和强化政府监管部门的监管等方面具有一定的参考意义。

In recent years, the phenomenon that the insiders of listed companies seek excess returns by illegally manipulating the reduction of stock prices has attracted the common attention of the market and audit institutions. Based on this background, this paper selects China’s A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2020 as the research sample to investigate the impact of insiders’ shareholding reduction behavior on the audit expenses of the annual report. The study found that with the increase of the proportion of internal reduction of listed companies, the annual audit fees charged by audit institutions also increase, which is not only reflected in the reduction behavior of major shareholders, but also in the reduction behavior of directors, supervisors, and senior executives. Mechanism inspection found that the insider reduction behavior mainly increased the annual report audit cost by increasing the audit risk. Further analysis shows that in private listed companies and large-scale reduction, the impact of insider reduction is more significant on audit expenses. The research expands the study on the economic consequences of insider reduction, and has certain reference significance for optimizing the reduction decision of listed companies in China, for the formulation of pricing decisions by auditors and for strengthening the supervi-sion of government regulatory departments.