Discussant\u27s response to The Acme Financial Statement Insurance Company Inc.: A case study

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/dl_proceedings/1043/thumbnail.jp

On the economics of product differentiation in Auditing

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/dl_proceedings/1176/thumbnail.jp

Fixed Costs, Audit Production, and Audit Markets: Theory and Evidence

We analyze the role of discretionary joint fixed costs in audit production. Given such costs, the investment decision and production of audit services must be analyzed over a client portfolio. We model this problem, and use monotone comparative statics (Milgrom and Shannon [1994]) to show the implications of variations in client-specific losses and the number of clients for the optimum level of fixed investment and auditassurance. We develop four hypotheses concerning the relations between audit quality and (1) the magnitude of potential client-specific losses; (2) average client losses in a portfolio; (3) the number of clients in a portfolio; and (4) the variability of losses in a portfolio. Using discretionary accruals as the audit quality proxy, we find evidence consistent with these hypotheses. Using PCAOB inspection results and financial statement restatements as proxies for audit quality, we find weaker evidence consistent with hypotheses 2, 3 and 4

Financial Characteristics of Companies Audited by Large Audit Firms

Purpose “ The purpose of this paper is to examine how financial characteristics associated with the choice of a big audit firm with further investigation on the agency costs of free cash flows.Design/methodology/approach “ The sample used for this work includes industrial listed companies from Germany and France. To test our hypothesis, we used a number of logit models, extending the standard model selection audit firm, to include the variables of interest. Following previous work, our dependent dummy variable is Big4 or non-Big4.Findings “ We observed that most independent variables in the German companies show similar results to previous work, but we did not have the same results for the French industry. Moreover, our findings suggest that the total debt and dividends can be an important reason for determining the choice of a large audit firm, reducing agency costs of free cash flows.Research limitations/implications “ This study has some limitations on the measurements of the cost of the audit fees and also generates opportunities for additional searching.Originality/value “ The paper provides only one aspect to explain the relationship between the problems of agency costs of free cash flow and influence in choosing a large auditing firm, which stems from investors\u27 demand for higher quality audits