This paper adds a new dimension to the research on strategic alliances by focusing on auditing rather than governance, performance, funding, or equity participation. It also identifies incomplete contracts as the driver of audit complexity, and extends the audit fee literature by documenting that the number of strategic alliances is a significant determinant of audit fees. Finally, the authors’ evidence that strategic alliances result in higher audit fees provides empirical support for the largely theoretical argument that incomplete contracts are complex. 

Demirkan, S. and N. Zhou. 2016. Audit Pricing for Strategic Alliances: An Incomplete Contract Perspective. Contemporary Accounting Research 33 (4): 1625-1647.

A strategic alliance is a long-term contract between multiple firms where resources are pooled to accomplish preset objectives, creating dependence between otherwise legally independent firms. Prior research has focused on the emergence, management and survival of alliances; consequently, there is not substantial research on the relation between strategic alliances and auditing. This paper fills that void by investigating how auditors price their audit services for firms involved in strategic alliances. 

The authors conduct a study on the pricing of audit services for strategic alliances through compiling data and utilizing descriptive statistics.  

• The authors find that the nonverifiability of information and potential agency behavior in alliances increase audit complexity, resulting in higher audit fees.
• The authors find that auditors are less likely to issue going-concern modified opinions when there is an increase in strategic alliances; moreover, an increase in strategic alliances is associated with a reduction in bankruptcy risk as measured by Altman Z-Scores.
• The authors find that an increase in strategic alliances is unrelated to the likelihood of financial misstatements.
• The authors find that an increase in strategic alliances is unrelated to internal control weakness opinions. 

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This study contributes to the auditor-client realignment literature by examining whether auditors’ client acceptance and pricing decisions vary with firm ownership structure, which was not investigated before. It also documents a significant association between the identity of the successor auditor and firm ownership structure following the resignation of the incumbent auditor. This is important given the potential consequences of auditor changes to both auditors and their clients. 

Khalil, S. and M. Mazboudi. 2016. Client Acceptance and Engagement Pricing following Auditor Resignations in Family Firms. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory 35 (4): 137 – 158. 

The authors of this paper extend current research by examining whether firm ownership structure is associated with client acceptance and pricing decisions following the resignation of the incumbent auditor. More specifically, the authors test whether the identity of the successor auditor (Big 4 or non-Big 4) and the change in audit fees following auditor resignations in family firms are significantly different from those in non-family firms in the U.S. They further investigate whether the aforementioned results hold when the identity of the CEO managing a family firm and the percentage of shares held by the family members are accounted for. Finally, the authors examine whether the likelihood of financial restatements in family firms over the two-year period following the incumbent auditor resignation is significantly different from that in non-family firms. 

The authors analyze results obtained using a sample of auditor resignations over the post-SOX period 2004-2012.

• The authors find that Big 4 auditors are more likely to serve as successor auditors following auditor resignations in family firms as opposed to non-family firms.
• The authors find that the likelihood of having Big 4 auditors serving as successor auditors is higher in family firms managed by a family member or by a professional manager. This implies that big 4 auditors perceive family firms as being less risky than their non-family counterparts following auditor resignations, irrespective of whether a family member is involved in management or not.
• The authors find that the change in audit fees following auditor resignations in family firms is significantly smaller than that in non-family firms after controlling for a wide battery of variables that affect the change in audit fees. 

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 This paper contributes to the literature on auditor industry expertise in many ways. First, it extends previous studies on this topic to examine whether industry specialists demonstrate different risk preferences in client acceptance decisions. The finding that partner-level industry specialists are more likely to accept less risky clients may partly explain why industry specialists have better quality clients.

Hsieh, Y., and Lin C. 2016. Audit Firms’ Client Acceptance Decisions: Does Partner-Level Industry Expertise Matter? Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory 35 (2): 97-120.

Recently, audit firms have paid more attention to client acceptance decisions due to increased litigation risk. As a result more and more studies have investigated what goes into making this important decision. However, most prior studies examine whether auditors evaluate client risk characteristics when making client portfolio management decisions and whether auditors change their portfolio management strategies in response to changed in response to changes in litigation liability. Few studies have examined the impact of auditor characteristics other than accounting firm size. Auditors with different attributes could have different risk considerations in making client portfolio management decisions. In fact, previous studies have suggested that auditors use industry experience as a risk management strategy to mitigate risk on client portfolio management decisions because industry specialists provide high-quality audits and thus decrease litigation risk and reflect a good client-auditor match. Audit firms make large investments in specialized industries, so specialist auditors have an incentive to shed risky clients to avoid litigation risk and protect their reputation; hence, whether audit firms use industry expertise as a risk management strategy to mitigate the effect of risk is an empirical issue. The authors of this paper hope to explore whether industry specialization affects the association between risk considerations and client acceptance decisions. 

The sample is restricted to Taiwanese listed companies audited by Big N audit firms from 1999 to 2010. The final sample contains 9,337 observations. A Client Acceptance Decision Model was created to examine the effect of auditor industry expertise on firms’ risk consideration when making client acceptance decisions. 

• The authors find that auditors are less likely to accept clients with audit risk higher than that of existing clients.
• The authors find that firm-level industry expertise has no significant effect on the association between risk consideration and client acceptance decisions.
• The authors find that partner-level industry specialists alone are less likely to accept clients with higher financial risk or higher audit risk, which supports the hypothesis that partner-level industry specialization affects the association between risk factors and client acceptance decisions. No evidence is found that firm-level industry expertise alone affects risk considerations in client acceptance decisions. 

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This paper asks whether auditors recognize the volatility of OCI and incorporate it into pricing of audits.  They find that audit fees do reflect changes in OCI and that these changes reflect various risk factors associated with OCI.  The findings suggest that auditors already recognize the difficulty in assessing value of fair value items which run through OCI—reinforcing regulator concerns about fair value valuation.

Huang, H., S. Lin, K. Raghunandan. 2016. The Volatility of Other Comprehensive Income and Audit Fees. Accounting Horizons 30 (2): 195-210.

This study investigates whether auditors incorporate volatility in other comprehensive income (OCI) into fees.  Increased attention from standard setters, both domestically and internationally, on fair value accounting has increased auditor focus on fair value financial instruments.  Fluctuations in many of these assets are reflected in OCI, thus volatility in OCI may indeed influence the auditor’s inherent risk assessment.  Other studies have shown that investors do not seem to accurately incorporate volatility of OCI in pricing, so it is an empirical question whether auditors can incorporate it into their risk assessment.

The authors use a sample of S&P 500 firms from 2002 to 2006 and supplement this sample with a comparable sample from 2008 to reinforce their findings.  Data on OCI was hand collected from the SEC’s EDGAR database and combined with financial information from Compustat and auditor data from Audit Analytics.  The authors exclude financial sector firms, resulting in a final sample of 1,858 firm-year observations.

The authors find:

• A positive relationship between volatility in OCI volatility and audit fees, with or without controlling for other factors that influence audit fees.
• Changes in OCI have predictive power for audit fees above and beyond changes in net income, suggesting items that flow through OCI are incorporated into audit pricing.
• When breaking out OCI volatility into its components, the authors find audit fees incorporate volatility in foreign currency translation, available-for-sale investments, and minimum pension liabilities.  Audit fees increase as volatility of these items increases.
• Audit fees have a negative relationship with volatility of cash flow hedges.  These hedges offset risk in the underlying prices; therefore, volatility in the hedges is indicative of firms successfully hedging against risk.  These firms pay lower audit fees.

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The study results are important to regulators and audit practitioners as they show an association between executive compensation and auditor compensation. The study results show that high executive risk-taking incentives, as measured by vega, contributes to higher audit fees. These results provide important insights into how incentives designed to compensate and motivate executives can alter the audit fee structure.

Chen, Y., F. A. Gul, M. Veeraraghavan, and L. Zolotoy. 2015. Executive Equity Risk-Taking Incentives and Audit Pricing. The Accounting Review 90 (6): 2205–2234.

This study assesses whether there is an association between executive stock compensation and audit fees. The authors specifically investigate whether the sensitivity of CEO compensation to stock return volatility (vega) and stock prices (delta) are associated with audit fees. Prior literature shows that higher vega leads managers to engage in more financial misreporting. This increase in financial misreporting could in turn influence audit risk assessment and audit fees.  

The main motivation for this study comes from the PCAOB’s recent related-party standard proposal. The proposed standard requires auditors to perform procedures to evaluate compensation practices when gaining an understanding of relationships between the company and its executive officers. In addition, current audit fee models do not consider executive compensation incentives in the pricing of audit services. Finally, there are extensive literatures on executive compensation and auditor compensation but no evaluation at the intersection of executive compensation practices and their effect on audit fees. This study attempts to address these gaps in the literature.

The authors employ an archival research methodology in this study. They obtain audit fee data from the Audit Analytics database and executive compensation from ExecuComp. The sample period is from 2000-2010. Company financial data is from Compustat Fundamentals Annual File.  

• The authors show that for clients with a high executive vega, audit firms charge higher audit fees. This follows the logic that clients with higher vega have a higher likelihood to misreport and that auditors consider that likelihood when pricing audit services. The authors also found that the increase in fees is not related to the effort needed to audit expenses related to stock-based compensation.
• The introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act weakens the association between vega and audit fees.
• CEO characteristics affect the relationship between vega and audit fees. Specifically, the positive association between vega and audit fees is stronger when the CEO is older and when the CEO is the board chair.

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