时间：2017年9月21日（周四），14:00-18:00

地点：学院南路校区学术会堂604

详细议程

14:00-16:00

讲座主题：Same-Firm Audit Office Switches and Informationally Motivated Opinion Shopping

讲座人：Yu Hou

摘要：Client companies switch auditors to avoid going concern audit opinions. Such opinion shopping activities may either be informationally motivated or driven by managerial opportunism. We empirically test these alternative motives for opinion shopping in the setting of same-firm audit office switches in which client companies change their audit engagement offices within the same audit firm. Adopting the empirical framework of Lennox (2000) to the U.S. data from 2000-2015, we find that client companies successfully improve going concern audit opinions through audit office-switch decisions. Moreover, the aforementioned empirical finding is stronger when opinion shopping involves larger audit offices, industry specialist offices, and offices in the same metropolitan areas. More importantly, we find that successful opinion-shopping companies tend to choose audit offices with low Type I errors, and they exhibit higher earnings quality than non-successful counterparts. Overall, the evidence suggests that same-firm audit office switching is informationally motivated and improves audit quality.

讲座人简介：Yu Hou（侯宇），助理教授，现任职于Queen’s University，2010年和2013年分别于清华大学和University of Toronto取得博士学位。主要研究兴趣包括财务报告质量、公司价值评估、审计等领域。相关研究成果发表于The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Review of Accounting Studies等国际知名的金融学和财务学期刊。

16:00-18:00

讲座主题：Resource Allocation in Different Litigation and Reputational Risk Environments

讲座人：Limei Che

摘要：This paper examines how the Big 4 audit firm allocates human capital resources to clients with different litigation and reputational (L&R) risks. Although resource allocation decisions are important for audit productions and audit quality, we have very limited knowledge on how audit firms’ resource allocation varies with the levels of clients’ L&R risks. This study uses a unique dataset that contains, for each team member in each rank, the number of audit hours and corresponding audit costs (audit hours*billing rate) for 909 engagements of one Swedish Big 4 firm in 2016. There are four hypotheses: compared to clients with low L&R risks, (H1) total audit team effort is higher in clients with high L&R risks, (H2) audit effort of each rank is higher in clients with high L&R risks, (H3) partners are allocated a higher proportion of audit effort in clients with high L&R risks, and (H4) a greater number of partners is allocated to clients with high L&R risks. We use public firms to proxy client firms with higher L&R risks, and surrogate audit effort by both the amount of audit hours and audit costs. Using both the full sample and the propensity score matched sample, we provide supportive evidence for H1, H3, and H4, and partial support for H2. More specifically, the results show that total audit effort is significantly higher for public firms (supporting H1), the proportion of partners’ (associates’) effort is higher (lower) for public clients (supporting H3), and there is a higher number of partners in teams for clients of high L&R risks (supporting H4). Instead of finding more effort of each rank for public clients, as predicted in H2, we show there is more effort for public clients from partners, directors, and senior managers, but indifferent effort of lower-ranked auditors (managers, junior managers, and associates). The results are significant both statistically and economically. The findings indicate that the Big 4 firm actually increases audit effort in clients of higher L&R risks by allocating more of the highest quality human capital, instead of only charging pure risk premiums to cover the potential L&R risks. This study advances our understanding of how the Big 4 firm allocates human capital resources to clients of different levels of L&R risks.

讲座人简介：Limei Che副教授现任职于University College of Southeast Norway，本科毕业于中国农业大学，2011年于BI Norwegian Business School取得博士学位。相关研究成果发表于Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, AUDITING: A Journal of Practice & Theory, Journal of Management and Governance等国际知名的财务学和管理学期刊。