The authors’ results indicate that the complexity associated with auditing more subjectively valued assets may affect audit fees in a manner that is not fully captured by the traditional log transformation. Based on their findings, the authors also suggest that future audit fee studies assess alternative mathematical transformations of client size variables.

Cullinan, C. P., H. Du, and X. Cheng. 2016. Size Variables in Audit Fee Models: An Examination of the Effects of Alternative Mathematical Transformations. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory. 35 (3): 169-181.

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The existing research is unclear about the mechanism behind the higher audit fees charged by the industry specialist auditors (ISAs). The fee premium can be explained either by higher audit hours or by higher audit fees per hour. Using Korean data, this study provides direct evidence of the source of the ISA fee premium. The results show ISAs spend more audit hours while charge lower unit price than non-ISAs, which indicates the ISA fee premium mainly comes from additional audit work performed by ISAs. One limitation of this study is the authors cannot differentiate the two potential explanations for the low unit price: cost savings arising from economies of scale or additional work performed by cheap audit labor.

Bae, G. S., S. U. Choi, and J. H. Rho. 2016. Audit Hours and Unit Audit Price of Industry Specialist Auditors: Evidence from Korea. Contemporary Accounting Research 33(1): 314-340.

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The results of this study are important to audit firm clients, audit firms, and audit regulators as they evaluate the benefits and costs of industry specialization. For auditors and their clients, the evidence indicates that specialist auditors in homogenous industries, even when complex accounting is involved, achieve economies of scale that are passed on to clients. Clients in homogenous industries appear to benefit from a lower cost audit without a decrease in audit quality. Moreover, audit firms may benefit from increased client retention in these industries because of their expertise and competitive price. And, though audit regulators have expressed concern about concentration in the audit market, the results indicate that concentration can improve audit firms’ economies of scale in homogenous and complex industries without reducing audit quality. As audit clients, audit firms, and audit regulators consider industry specialization, this paper provides support for auditor specialization in homogenous industries.

Bills, K. L., D. C. Jeter, and S. E. Stein. 2015. Auditor industry specialization and evidence of cost efficiencies in homogenous industries. The Accounting Review 90 (5): 1721-1754.

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The study provides useful insight into current regulatory debates on the auditor’s economic dependence on the client and increases understanding to the reasons why previous research provides mixed evidence on the association between various fee metrics and the extent of earnings management. If the association between abnormal fees and the magnitude of discretionary accruals is conditioned on the sign of abnormal fees, examining the association without reference to the sign of abnormal fees most likely leads to observations of insignificant associations, as also reported in most previous studies. This study’s findings suggest that future research on similar issues should take into account the asymmetric nonlinearity in the fee-quality relation.

Choi, J. H., J. B. Kim, and Y. Zang. 2010. Do Abnormally High Audit Fees Impair Audit Quality? Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory 29 (2): 115-140.

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