This paper contains important applications for borrowing firms wanting to have more favorable loan contract terms. By hiring a high-quality auditor this decreases risks for the creditors and therefore oftentimes reduces the stringency of debt covenants. Subsequently, the borrowing firm will violate the debt covenants less.

Robin, Ashok, Q. Wu, and H. Zhang. 2017. “Auditor Quality and Debt Covenants”. Contemporary Accounting Research 34.1 (2017): 154.

Debt covenants are in place to help mitigate information asymmetry and agency problems between lender and borrower. This study examines whether high-quality auditors decrease the lenders’ demand for strict covenants (contracting effect), therefore reducing the likelihood of covenant violations (violation reduction effect). The assumption is that the information provided by a high-quality auditor would lower information asymmetry and agency problems, and consequently there would be no reason for strict debt covenants. 

There was a sample of 35,181 observations from 1996-2007. Compustat was used to gather annual covenant-violation data and Deal Scan was used to gather U.S. loan facility information.  The authors used an ordinary least squared (OLS) regression model in the analysis.

Overall, the authors find high-quality audits are in fact related with fewer and looser covenants in debt contracts.

Specifically, the authors find the following:

• As auditor quality increases the probability of financial covenant violations decrease. The probability is 1.45% lower for firms audited by industry experts and about 4.98% lower for firms audited by the Big 4.
• High-quality auditors play a role in mitigating the adverse effect of covenant violations on corporate borrowing costs.

http://commons.aaahq.org/groups/e5075f0eec/summary

This paper complements and extends the limited extant research on inspection risk by clearly defining the construct and providing empirical evidence consistent with its existence and impact on auditors’ planning decisions. The authors contend that while auditors may perceive that PARs do not influence effort or fees, both PARs likely cause auditors, perhaps unconsciously, to increase effort and fees. 

C. M. Stefaniak, R. W. Houston, and D. B. Brandon. 2017. Investigating Inspection Risk: An Analysis of PCAOB Inspections and Internal Quality Reviews. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory 36 (1): 151 – 168.

The authors report the results of an experiment that examines how auditor anticipation of the two primary external and internal post-audit reviews (PAR), specifically, U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) inspections or public accounting firms’ internal quality reviews (IQRs), affects auditors’ perceptions of overall engagement risk, as well as effort and pricing decisions. The authors define inspection risk as “the risk that an auditor or audit firm will suffer harm as a result of a PAR.” Although the current PAR regime has been in place for over ten years, there is little empirical evidence concerning whether, and to what extent, anticipating a PAR impacts auditor behavior, and whether the effects of anticipating a PCAOB inspection or IQR differ. IQRs also remain largely uninvestigated, despite researchers beginning to investigate external PCAOB reviews. 

To investigate how PAR salience affects auditors’ judgments and decisions, the authors conduct a 1 x 3 between-subjects experiment using a number of high-level auditors as participants. They manipulate PAR salience as PCAOB inspection salient, IQR salient, or no explicit expectation of a PAR. 

• The authors find that PAR salience yields greater perceived overall engagement risk, even after controlling for traditional engagement risk-related factors, implying that auditors perceive inspection risk as incremental to these factors.
  • In addition, increased PAR salience results in greater audit effort and fees, consistent with an inspection risk component.
• The authors find that both PARS yield higher fees, with the higher fees attributable only to greater effort, rather than an “inspection risk premium.”
• PCAOB inspection results are more visible than IQRs, and partners perceive that PCAOB inspections can yield greater negative consequences for themselves and their firms; therefore, the authors find that PCAOB inspection salience involves larger increases in perceived overall engagement risk and audit effort than does IQR salience.
  • However, the authors do not find differences in audit fees between PCAOB and IQR salience. 

www.auditingresearchsummaries.org

Requiring engagement partners to sign their names to audit reports appears to result in increased audit quality, earnings informativeness, and audit fees, suggesting that the signature requirement emphasizes personal accountability for engagement partners. Requiring the identification of engagement partners in audit reports would likely have similar effects. Thus, there are both costs and benefits that the PCAOB should consider in making its decision regarding partner identification.

For more information on this study, please contact Chan Li: chanli@katz.pitt.edu.

Carcello, J. V. and C. Li. 2013. Costs and benefits of requiring an engagement partner signature: Recent experience in the United Kingdom. The Accounting Review 88 (5): 1511-1546.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) is considering requiring the identification of the engagement partner in audit reports. Proponents of the proposal argue that it will increase accountability and transparency, which will result in improved audit quality. Opponents argue that engagement partner identification is unnecessary, as audit firms’ quality control systems and the threats of sanctions by regulators and private litigation are sufficient to hold partners accountable. Identifying engagement partners is similar to them signing audit reports in their own name, which the U.K. began requiring in 2009. Because of the similarities between the U.K. and the U.S., it is likely that the effects of requiring engagement partner identification in the U.S. will be similar to the effects of requiring the engagement partner to sign the audit report in the U.K. Therefore, the authors investigate the benefits and costs of requiring partner signatures in the U.K. in the form of changes in audit quality and audit fees. The results are likely informative of the benefits and costs of requiring partner identification in the U.S.

Using publicly-disclosed data on companies listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) between 2008 and 2010 (the years surrounding the implementation of the signature requirement), the authors examine audit quality changes using the following measures:

• Abnormal accruals
• Likelihood of meeting earnings thresholds
• Earnings informativeness
• Likelihood of qualified opinions

The authors also examine the change in audit fees following the implementation of the signature requirement.

The authors find that following the implementation of the signature requirement, abnormal accruals and the likelihood of meeting earnings thresholds decrease in the U.K. These results suggest that audit clients’ earnings management declines due to the signature requirement. Further, the association between return on assets and stock market returns increases following the signature requirement, implying that reported earnings becomes more informative of firm value to investors following the implementation of the signature requirement. The likelihood of audit clients receiving a qualified audit opinion following the signature requirement also increases, suggesting that audit reporting becomes more conservative with the signature requirement. Finally, audit fees increase with signature requirement. Thus, signature requirement appears to result in higher fees for audit clients. These changes do not occur for U.S. firms or other European firms during the same period and do not occur for the U.K. in the period prior to the introduction of the signature requirement, providing evidence that the changes in the U.K. are the result of the signature requirement.

http://www.auditingresearchsummaries.org

The findings show that managers implicitly encourage auditors to underreport time when dealing with a favorable client. While CPA firms have decreased explicit incentives to underreport, these implicit incentives makes it likely that seniors are underreporting their time. This can lead to unrealistic budgets and possible costing issues for firms. Also, if a senior does not underreport they could risk getting a bad evaluation or not be assigned to desirable future engagements. These situations could lead to a reduction in raises, promotions, and continued employment.

Agoglia, C. P., R. C. Hatfield, and T. A. Lambert. 2015. Audit team time reporting: An agency theory perspective. Accounting, Organizations and Society 44: 1-14.

There is a substantial concern that audit teams underreport time for audit engagements. While some recent research suggests that explicit incentives to underreport have been reduced, other research suggests that there still may be implicit incentives to underreport. Based on agency theory, it is likely that reviewers rate the preparer more favorably when the client is desirable and the preparer underreported their time. The purpose of this study is to investigate this concern by evaluating how reviewer’s performance evaluations of the preparer and future staffing decisions are influenced by the following factors:

• Desirability of the client
• Whether the preparer underreported or reported accurately.

Data for this paper was collected prior to May 2015 by mailing experimental instruments to both managers and partners of CPA firms.  

Managers rated the performance of a senior higher when they underreported time and were working on a desirable client. The findings also show that managers are more likely to request an underreporting senior on a future audit engagement. However, partners did not show any preference to seniors who underreported time.

http://www.auditingresearchsummaries.org

This study provides evidence that should help inform the public discussion of audit quality in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley era and adds empirical substance to theoretical frameworks of audit quality.  

Christensen, B. E., S. M. Glover, T. C. Omer, and M. K. Shelley. 2016. Understanding Audit Quality: Insights from Audit Professionals and Investors. Contemporary Accounting Research 33 (4): 1648 – 1684. 

Much debate exists surrounding the definition, composition, and measurement of audit quality. This debate continues despite the importance of audit quality and the large body of research investigating the topic. This paper contributes to this debate by obtaining perceptions and measures of audit quality from audit professionals and investors, two groups heavily interested in the audit and financial reporting process.  Furthermore, this study provides evidence that contributes to understanding and defining audit quality, providing empirical evidence regarding many of the audit quality indicators proposed by the PCAOB, adding empirical substance to existing theoretical frameworks of audit quality and highlighting differences and consistencies between auditor and investor expectations about the audit process. 

The authors conducted a survey of audit professionals and investors to obtain their insights on audit quality.

• The authors find that audit professionals define audit quality primarily in terms of compliance with professional auditing standards, while investors rely more on the individual characteristics of the engagement team performing the audit.
• The authors find almost unanimous agreement that individual auditor characteristics influence audit quality.
• The authors find evidence that input from parties outside the core engagement team such as the national office and engagement review partners is an important attribute of audit quality.
• The authors find evidence that client-specific factors such as restatements, SEC enforcement actions, and the frequency of audit committee meetings are significant indicators of audit quality; however, they also find that investors’ perceptions of audit quality do not fully incorporate the importance of the audit committee in the audit process to the same extent as auditors. 

www.auditingresearchsummaries.org