论文报告：The Importance of Clients’ Social Ties to Audit Quality

主讲人：王子田 博士

时间：2018年12月13日下午13:30——15:30

地点：学院楼301

参加对象：会计与经济发展研究青年博士，学术型研究生，欢迎其他师生积极参加。

会计学院

会计与经济发展研究院

报告人简介：

王子田，南洋理工大学博士，昆士兰大学会计系高级讲师主要代表作如下：

1. Selection models in accounting research (with Clive Lennox and Jere Francis).

The Accounting Review,2012,87 (2): 589-616

-- received 727 citations based on Google Scholars (October 2018)

2. Earnings management, audit adjustments and the financing of corporate acquisitions:

evidence from China (with Clive Lennox and Xi Wu).

Journal of Accounting and Economics, 2018, 65: 21-40

3. The determinants and consequences of tax audits: some evidence from China.

(with Wanfu Li and Jeffery Pittman)

Journal of the American Taxation Association, forthcoming

报告论文摘要：

Abstract: Extant evidence implies that social ties between auditors and their clients undermine audit quality. We extend prior research by exploring the importance of social ties among auditors’ clients to audit quality. On one hand, social ties foster communication among clientsconcerning how to deal with an auditor, which puts clients in a better position to negotiateagainst proposed audit adjustments. On the other hand, if an auditor provides a low-qualityaudit to one client, then this will likely become known to their other clients via social networkchannels. Consequently, auditors eager to protect their valuable reputations will impose stricterexternal monitoring on all of their clients under this argument. In examining audit adjustment data in China to shed light on which force dominates, we find that auditors require moreadjustments to earnings for a client whose audit committee members are socially connectedwith audit committee members of other clients. In contrast, we do not find any perceptibleimpact of social connections stemming from top management on auditors’ decisions to book anadjustment. Our results are consistent with the intuition that audit committees play a crucialrole in ensuring reliable financial reporting, whereas top managers do not always demandaccounting transparency. Accordingly, auditors’ incentives to deliver higher-quality audits are more salient when clients’ social ties arise from audit committee members, rather than topmanagers. Set against recent evidence that audit quality suffers when auditors and their clientsare socially connected, our research provides insight on the positive impact of another form ofsocial networks on auditor performance