Artikel Burke et al. (2019)

11 important questions on Artikel Burke et al. (2019)

What is the effect of partner identification on audit quality?

Arguments PCAOB:
- Partner identification will increase partner accountability. This should motivate auditors to increase effort and deliver higher quality audits.
- Partner identification will increase transparency. This allows stakeholders to track a partner's negative regulatory and legal outcomes which should motivate auditors to alter their behavior.

Arguments audit firms:
- Auditors are already kept accountable (e.g. Peer reviews, potential inspection and regulatory sanctions)
- Partner identification could cause inefficiencies. It could mean that auditors would do more and unnecessary audit procedures which would cause higher audit fees and more audit delays.

What is the effect of audit partner identification on audit pricing?

The PCAOB argues that audit effort will increase due to exposure of reputational risk. Therefore, audit firms will increase their audit effort and this should result in higher audit fees.

Audit firms state that they have to compensate for additional risk and unnecessary procedures which will result in higher audit fees.

What is the second hypothesis?

Audit fees will increase in the US after audit partner names are required to be disclosed.
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What is the effect of audit partner identification on audit delays?

Prior studies show that audit regulation increased audit work and therefore audit delays. However, filling in the name of the responsible partner should not increase audit work. Moreover, partner identification could result in reputational concerns which may motivate auditors to avoid negative outcomes such as delays.

What is the third hypothesis?

Audit delay will not change in the US after audit partner names are required to be disclosed.

Which companies are investigated and why?

Big 4 and non-Big audit firms.

These companies differ in terms of:
- Investment in training and audit methodologies
- Internal quality control systems
- Workload distribution among employees    
- Big 4 firms may experience greater risk due to scrutiny by external parties such as media, analysts, creditors and investors.

Big 4 firms are already motivated to deliver optimal audit quality. Therefore, new regulation could cause inefficiencies such as increased fees and/or delays.
Non-Big 4 could be motivated to increase audit effort.

The authors also examine the effect of partner characteristics on audit quality, audit fees and audit delay. Which are they?

  • Gender: they argue that men and women are different in term of risk tolerance, diligence, conservatism, etc.
  • Busyness: the effect of workload
  • Education: knowledge and skills
  • Social connections: possible source of information advantage

What are the results of partner identification on audit quality?

The audit quality has improved for all the firms and the Big4 audit firms (in line with accountability and legal, regulatory and reputational risk). No significant effect for non-Big 4 audit firms.

What are the results of partner identification on audit fees?

The disclosure of audit partner names significantly increased audit fees for both Big 4 and non-Big 4 audit firms. This suggests that auditors put more effort after the disclosure requirement.

For the non-Big4, there is no increase in quality. The increase in audit fees can be explained by the increase in liability concerns, this is then priced into the audit.

What are the results of partner identification on audit delay?

Decrease in audit delay for both Big4 and non-Big 4 auditors. This can be due to greater accountability and risk incentives.

What are the results of partner characteristics on the audit?

- No significant effect on audit quality.
- Audits by female partner are more expensive
- Busy auditors are cheaper. This could be due to that busy auditors audit more clients but smaller clients
- Audits conducted by partners which have more social connections are more expensive but that these audits experience fewer delays. It is possible that social connection bring informational advantages about the clients resulting in smoother audits.

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