Profit sharing in an auditing oligopoly

This paper examines how partners in an audit firm can use profit-sharing rules to induce optimal partner behavior from the firm's point of view, taking into account the strategic competition of firms in an auditing oligopoly. We use a linear contracting framework to investigate the effects of profit-sharing rules on individual partners' various decisions, including their pricing strategies and effort choices. We assume that efficient audits of different types of clients require different effort profiles with respect to degree of partner cooperation. For example, the audit of a complex company requires different amounts of partner collaboration than does the audit of a simple company. Moreover, since it is too costly for an enforcement party, such as the head office of an audit firm or a court, to verify each client's type in order to resolve compensation disputes among the firm's partners, it is reasonable to assume that client type cannot be contracted upon for partner compensation purposes. Given this assumption, we derive conditions under which there exists an equilibrium in which audit firms strategically choose different profit-sharing rules to specialize in different types of clients, thereby earning positive economic profits. Our analysis provides insights into the strategic competition among the big audit firms, and helps to explain the observed differences in the compensation plans of these firms and in the nature of their client portfolios

A comparison of the technical efficiency of accounting firms among the US, China, and Taiwan under the framework of a stochastic metafrontier production function

[[abstract]]This study employs the newly developed stochastic metafrontier production function by Huang et al. (A new approach to estimating the metafrontier production function based on a stochastic frontier framework. Working paper, Vanderbilt University, National Cheng-chi University, Taiwan, 2012) to compare the technical efficiencies of accounting firms (AFs) among the US, China, and Taiwan, operating under different technologies. Although AFs play an important role in a nation’s capital market, the accounting industry has not attracted much attention to academic researchers. The main difference between the stochastic metafrontier function and the one proposed by Battese et al. (J Prod Anal 21:91–103, 2004) and O’Donnell et al. (Empir Econ 34:231–255, 2008) lies in the second step, where the stochastic frontier approach (SFA) is recommended instead of programming techniques. Taiwan’s AFs are found to have the highest average metafrontier technical efficiency (MTE) and AFs in the US have the highest technology gap ratio (TGR). Nonetheless, the average TGR and MTE values of American AFs are closer to those of Taiwan. The low performance of Chinese AFs may be attributed to government regulations and the lack of market competition. However, the programming technique suggests reverse results for AFs in Taiwan and the US and larger variances for TGR and MTE. Then these three countries’ AFs show decreasing returns to scale, indicating that mergers and acquisitions may not be advantageous for expanding their production scale.[[notice]]補正完